INTO THAT SILENT SEA

At the age of 18 I traveled by sea from Boston to England, and the following year wrote this story, a mixture of fact and imagination inspired as much by my great devotion to the writings of Joseph Conrad as by the voyage itself.
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INTO THAT SILENT SEA 

Night falls magnificently upon the ocean; the darkening clouds, sky, and water interpenetrate until they surround you with a unified, brooding hemisphere of mingling greys and blues. Until it sinks into the whitecaps marking the horizon, the expiring sun cuts across the sea a path shifting slowly from yellow to orange to red, silvered here and there with the crests of the waves. It is a scene no camera or brush can recreate, so greatly is its impact dependent upon an engulfing Nature secure in its own grandeur.

    Preoccupied with these musings, I leaned lazily on the starboard rail of the small freighter which was bearing me doggedly, if not rapidly, across the Atlantic. With only half a dozen fellow passengers, I was finding the trip singularly uneventful, but my enforced idleness was not difficult to accept as an opportunity to give myself up to reflection and to the reading of whatever battered books I could purloin from the crew`s library. The isolation encouraged introspection, and such was the receptivity of my indolence that I was somewhat annoyed when the dinner bell called me away from my twilight reveries.

The food on the ship was, fortunately, unexceptionable, but that evening I was compelled to consume it to the accompaniment of ceaseless chatter from the individual seated opposite, a woman of indeterminate age and unquenchable enthusiasm, who, bent on a three week perusal of Europe with her balding and non-descript husband, harangued me at great length upon the virtues and vicissitudes of a sea voyage. After the meal I returned to the deck, but the night air had chilled in the interim, and I consequently made my way to the lounge, where several of the passengers, driven by their dislike of inactivity, had begun a half-hearted game of cards which they induced me to join.

We played for several hours in a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke which thickened gradually as the evening slid towards midnight. At length winners and losers alike drifted away towards their dimly lit cabins, searching their somnolent minds for plans for the morrow’s activities, and bracing themselves for another night of struggling to remain in the bunks of a ship gyrating rhythmically in the swells created by a hurricane some two hundred miles distant.

As I sat alone in the lounge of the silent ship, I tried to divest myself of all thoughts by staring at the clouds of stale smoke floating to the yellowed ceiling, but through my mind ran continual pictures of the sea, sometimes flat and infinite in blazing sun, sometimes agitated and forbidding, menaced by grey and lowering skies, mixing stealthily in my imagination its multifarious shades.

I left the lounge and groped my way to the forward deck, where I leaned against a mast and watched the indifferent stars flash intermittently as they glided smoothly back and forth within the angular frames thrown by the swaying rigging against the black of the sky. From where l stood, the bow appeared as a sharp, black triangle cutting off from view the horizon and the dark-running sea as it soared upward towards the stars on the crest of a swell, then revealing the restless water again as it plunged downwards into the smoothly curving trough.

I caught sight of the man on the bow only when he struck a match for his pipe, and his face, strangely illuminated by the wavering flame, cut through my thoughts to pierce the illusion of my complete isolation.  A feeling something akin to resentment sprang up in me at the realisation that another human being was intruding on a scene of which I had considered myself the sole spectator and therefore in some way the possessor. When he heard my approaching footsteps, he turned towards me, and in the dim light diffusing towards the bow from amidships I could see him smile amiably as he said, “Enjoying the night air?”

“And the view," I replied.

 My initial disturbance at his presence had given way to gratitude for having a companion to talk with. In addition, I realized that since this man was apparently the bow watch, he was out here not to experience the beauty of the night, but to perform a duty he would probably prefer to neglect. The scene, I surmised, could mean nothing to him, its poetry doubtless long since dulled by familiarity. But his next remark revealed the inaccuracy of my judgment.

“Beautiful, isn`t it ?”

It was more a tentative statement than a question, uttered in a quiet voice suggesting a greater degree of sensitivity than one might expect in a sailor.

“It’s as if you`re the only person in the world, standing here at the point of the ship, nothing in front of you except the sea and night, your back turned on the ship, everything which reminds you of other men out of sight and hearing behind you. Come, stand up here and see what I mean.”

Somewhat surprised by his voicing of thoughts so similar to my own, l nevertheless stepped onto the narrow platform wedged into the angle where port and starboard fuse into one, consolidating their separate identities into a single point. As I leaned out into the night, all traces of the ship disappeared around the periphery of my vision, and I was left with the awesome illusion of hanging mysteriously supported above dark waters gliding silently beneath me. I felt myself millions of miles from the rest of the world, hovering in the gentle breeze above the dark Atlantic while humanity slept in distant cities and towns, unaware of the supremely self-sufficient seas rolling on timelessly in the distance.

“You know," said my companion at length, “I once had a skipper who used to come out on deck every night and lean over the railing, gazing at the water. He sometimes came up to the bow when I was on watch, and talked with me a little, although he usually just stared out into the night. One time, when he was staring particularly hard at the water below, he said something strange to me. He sort of muttered under his breath, ‘It seems to me that if there’s anything absolute in this universe, it must be like this sea beneath us. It offers itself to us, but we only skim precariously across it in tin boxes, never grasping the eternity it represents.” I didn`t understand him then, but mumbled a few words of agreement before going below - it was the end of my watch. As I was about to enter the crew’s quarters, I looked back and saw him outlined against the sky, motionless, his head in his hands, his elbows on the rail. The next morning he was gone. We put out boats to look for him, but they found nothing. Maybe he slipped, maybe he jumped. I’m inclined to think he jumped. He never was a very happy man, and he seemed to believe the sea was offering some sort of infinity and peace to him. I sometimes think I see what he meant.”

I thought I did too. I myself could feel to a disconcerting degree the pull of the bottomless waters, could sense beneath me something limitless and inscrutable. I myself would not jump, but I could see how years upon years at sea could impress upon a man, burdened as this captain was with an unsatisfactory existence, the desire to be swallowed up by a world of primeval silence. One jump, and a world left behind, a finite world quivering with the desperation of its ferocity, surrounded and baffled by a seemingly impenetrable night.

The two of us remained silent. Our thoughts were the same, perhaps. A fog I had not noticed closed in upon us, and soon the lights from the small island of humanity amidships faded and were gone. I bid goodnight to the man I could see but dimly, and made my way to the centre of the sleeping ship. It was a bit too dark, and I wanted some light.

HORROR FOR THE NOVICE

Upon arriving in England at the age of 18 and meeting my father for the first time, I discovered that we both had a taste for horror and occult literature of the entertainingly over-the-top variety, such as that written by Dennis Wheatley, H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen.   This inspired a satirical article I wrote for the college magazine, which, while embarrassingly sophomoric in places, also has its amusing moments:

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HORROR FOR THE NOVICE

It is with great dismay that the lover of stories of the macabre realises that this genre of narrative has passed into a period of what he can only hope is temporary eclipse. It has been replaced in the public esteem by science fiction, the authors of which no longer indulge in the unabashedly gruesome and horrifying, but explain their eight-headed homivores with reference to the Octocephalic Theory of Transmutation. Their stories are set on quasi-utopian asteroids, and their dialogue peppered with such phrases as:

‘You know Bistro is not one of us; his mother was half Outsider.’

and :

‘Rork, you are a Mutant; you must be destroyed ! (Zzap.)’

We would not say that such literature is lacking in a certain merit, but we sometimes miss the green, disembodied, seven-fingered hand sliding under the door, and must forego the slight chill down the spine and the vicarious terror brought to us by the Great Horror Story Masters. Nevertheless, there remain the  faithful few who scan the new booklists for promising titles and who reread by the full moon the Great Classics. They are relatively conspicuous, by virtue of their tendency to examine people’s throats for the two small red marks which denote a victim of the preying vampire, by their persistent contention that Bram Stoker should have his place on the Albert Memorial, and by their almost devout attitude towards Walpurgis Nacht. Yet to keep these people happy, the Horror Literature cannot be allowed to remain unaugmented. We therefore wish to provide a helpful guide to the Writing of Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. The strict adherence to the following reliable formulae is greatly to be recommended.

The Opening

There are many different types of opening, but certain ones are more or less standard and to be commended to the amateur. Excessive deviation from either the letter or the spirit of the following examples should be avoided at all costs.

• a. Standard Victorian Opening (So-called because of its predominance in stories of the nineteenth century, not only in horror tales.)

“On a dark and gloomy cloudless night in the year 18--, a mysterious rider might have been seen galloping silently through the small Transylvanian village of B— . But this was no ordinary horseman...”

Note particularly in this opening the manner in which dates and names of towns must not be given, possibly to avert libel suits. Devotees of this Opening must also be sure to use the tentative phrase “might have been seen”, which lends a certain air of mystery at the outset. Recommended locales are: Transylvania, Serbian countryside, Black Forest.

• b. The Justification-Confession Gambit. (This Opening is of the shock type, and usually poses a rhetorical question as a start.)

Examples :

“Am I, John Ramsey Baldwin, a murderer? Let me tell you, in my own words, how it happened; you may then judge for yourself if the blood of my uncle is on my hands, or if the cause of his death was not something beyond human comprehension—something as inevitable as it was horrifying.”

or :

“They say I am mad, but I assure you I am as sane as any man living. They have given me something to write with, and I can therefore put down the literal truth in hopes that someone will read it and know of the true causes of my condition.”

Either of these variations will then be followed by :

“It all began that fateful night a little over a year ago—a night indelibly branded upon my memory. Had I but known what lay in store, I would never have stayed in the house alone . . .”

In this Opening the author must make continual use of the had-I-but-known motif, thus building up an artificial tension that will be as effective as any other type.

• c. The “I-tell-you-chaps” Opening

This Opening takes its name from the invariable inclusion at some point in the subsequent story of :

“I tell you, chaps, I’m not accounted a weak or cowardly man, and I’ve faced my share of fear in the War and in my African days, but this blind unreasoning terror is something different, and I’m not ashamed to say I turned and ran for all I was worth.”

The Opening begins with :

"The dinner, as always when Carstairs was host, was excellent, and we had repaired to the drawing room for port and cigars. Somehow the conversation had turned to matters of the occult, and we each told, half-facetiously, of some reportedly supernatural incident. I had begun a dissertation on ancient Malayan fertility cults, when the dark young man who had been introduced to me as Harcourt interrupted with a vehemence which, in view of his almost complete silence during the meal, came as a distinct shock. ‘It’s all very well to scoff,’ he cried, ‘but if you fellows had seen the things I have in the jungle, you wouldn’t feel so free to mock what you don’t understand.’ "

From this point on, the young man’s narrative will be interrupted occasionally by such comments as :

“He paused, and with violently shaking hands poured himself another sherry. We sat in unbearably tense silence as we waited for him to go on. Finally he steadied himself, and took up once more the dreadful tale . . .”

• d. The Journal Opening

This is the Opening to be used, appropriately enough, when the story is to be told as the writings in a journal. It may or may not be preceded by an introduction along the following lines :

“Among the belongings which were left to me by my late and intimate friend, Hector Nadir, was a small, black journal. As everyone connected with the events therein related is long since dead, I feel the time has come to release to the world the dreadful tale which my friend painstakingly inscribed, from day to horrible day, in his cramped, nervous handwriting, and which will clarify once and for all the mysterious circumstances surrounding his mysterious and gruesome death.”

Whether this introduction is used depends on the author’s personal taste, as well as upon his egotism. At any rate, the actual journal must begin thus :

"April the 30th:

It is with a shaking hand that I put pen to paper to relate the appalling events which have occurred today, as well as those which I feel sure will occur tomorrow, and for many days to come, but I feel that unless I can devote my attention to some concrete action, such as the writing of this journal, I shall go mad even more rapidly than is bound to happen in the natural course of these events. Even now I cannot think well enough to express myself clearly, as I see by the previous sentence. But the events. At first I thought I was imagining things, but now I realise . . .”

This Opening is to be recommended to those whose command of the language is something less than perfect, as any stylistic infelicity can be blamed on the unfortunate Nadir.


There are, of course, many variations on these Standard Openings, but the novice is strongly urged to curb any tendency towards rash innovations until he has acquired a comprehensive grasp of the fundamentals of The Opening.

The Main Body

It is in the main body of the story that the ingenuity can be given a certain liberty.We counsel would-be writers, however, to avoid such things as accounts of Auntie Lizzie and Her Ghost, and to concentrate on esoteric and hideous beings. It is always helpful to think of a unique name for your monster, if monster there be, but if the emphasis of the story is on the incognito aspect of the creature, it is advisable to fall back on the traditional name “the Thing”, capital letter of course being essential.

In addition, for descriptions and such, a few hours spent with Roget’s Thesaurus or any story by H.P. Lovecraft will provide a good vocabulary of words such as “loathsome, hideous, eldritch, blood-curdling, repulsive, etc.” Another important part of many horror stories is the inclusion of esoteric references and strange incantations, preferably in Old English, Latin, or some vaguely oriental tongue. A few possibilities, which can be worked into almost any story, are as follows :

• “Many an unwitting traveller had entered the vast Ralmoot Swamp, only to meet with a hideous death at the hands, or more accurately, the claws of the Being.”
• "I knew there was little I could do to save myself from It, for it is written :

‘He spairis no lord for his piscence,

His awful straik may no man flee.

Timor mortis conturbat me.’

•  ‘For the answer to that,’ replied Carruthers quietly, ‘you should consult the Addendum to my monograph on Supramental Analysis of Inter~Astral Interpolation.’ ”

In the middle story some authors may prefer to rely on their powers of description, and simply present a beast of some sort in all its horrible splendour, paying little attention to the plot. This is all right as far as it goes, as atmosphere is the most important feature of a good horror story. Nevertheless, a good plot is always useful, and it does not require great imagination to conceive a plot from a small idea, such as :

• Monsters emerging from a disused toolshed.
• Grandfather clocks containing aged Poltergeists.
• The discovery of a voodoo sect in East Sheen.

Obviously one could go on for hours, but the reader will appreciate the fact that one need only place oneself in the correct frame of mind to have the ideas come to one of their own accord.

These then are the essential elements of the formula. The ending is a purely personal matter, as the main impact of the story comes at that point, and the author must therefore take the risk of deciding on his finale completely on his own.

We recommend a surprise ending.

THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR

My daughter recently passed on to me from my sister a copy of the literary magazine I edited at the college I attended when I went to England at the age of 18, containing a poem I had forgotten, that I wrote under the influence of Archibald Macleish's poem "You, Andrew Marvell". You might find it amusingly pessimistic, but I think it not bad for an adolescent stab at historical Weltschmerz:

THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR

The force that wraps in ice the outworn fall
Drives ever west a shadow on the land,
Muffles the early murmur round the Sphinx,
Urges the quiet crawl of artless moss
Into the Parthenon.
With dust it fills the wheel ruts, dries the blood
Within the Coliseum, snaps the head
From unlamented Juno, scars with weeds
The drooping Palatine.

THe triremes rot in fifty sunless fathoms
Of the Aegean. The cross of Christ
Has joined as feeble smoke Jerusalem's skies.
Raphael's brush, Michelangelo's chisel
Are ash and dust beneath your halting feet,
Yourself a ghost grown old.

Look there behind you. The shadow nears.
Your thought, your art fall slowly by your grave;
The grandson cannot see them through the night.