Raymond S. Spears

“ Fear gripped him—terror that grew within till the very beating of his heart was thunder in the silence of the cabin in the river quiet.
Jerald Toskin had trifled a little with stances and mediumistic phenomena, and sometimes he had seen a Ouiji board spell out things which were startling and inexplicable. The flutter of a curtain, moved by invisible powers, the lifting of a table under the gentle urge of a circle of hands, whose finger tips were on it, messages across the border land of ultimate adventure were all well enough with one’s own people around, but here in this boat! ”

“ He heard something; it sounded as though his anchor rope was stretching when a current in the eddy pulled the shanty boat about; he felt a cold wave, and no iceberg out of Greenland ever made a man shudder more than Toskin. ”

“ He picked up the newspaper and read the several accounts of the results of a ghastly tragedy.
When out of his subconsciousness welled up whole flood tides of fears and dreads, he forced himself calmly to reason with himself, and urge away the terror by bringing in the reign of his judgment. But that fight which he made with himself in those long hours left its mark on his very soul. He won out, but not by banishing the spectres from him.
Instead, he accepted their presence; he told himself that far and wide across the earth are the dismal places of violence and cruelty and hate ”