
Transcriber's Note:
A night on the sea turns unsettling as the breeze carries an eerie, yellow glow across the water. On board the yacht Ariel, the glamorous couple Cliff and Vilma feel a chill that hints at something far beyond a simple bout of nerves. Their laughter fades when a strange, ancient vessel emerges from the fog, its rotted timbers and ghostly oars moving as if pulled by an unseen hand.
The sight of a dead crew—pale, rigid, and dripping with a centuries‑old dread—pushes the yacht’s passengers into a panic they can’t rationalize. Their new captain, a cryptic man named Leon Corio, offers a unsettling calm while the sea seems to pulse with an otherworldly drum. As the moon hangs like a cold eye, the party realizes the island they head toward may harbor more than just rocks and waves. The story builds a tense, atmospheric horror that leaves listeners hovering between curiosity and dread.
Language
en
Duration
~59 minutes (56K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Release date
May 21, 2010
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1910–2003
A lively figure from science fiction’s early days, he helped shape the genre not just as a writer but as a publisher and fan. His career stretched from pulp-magazine stories to the founding of Fantasy Press, which brought landmark speculative fiction to book form.
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