“The Thing in the Weeds” (1913)

William Hope Hodgson’s story of troubles at sea on a dark night of the soul appears in his Sargasso Sea Stories collection, which unfortunately seems to be hard to find at the moment. Not even Project Gutenberg has it online. There are some cheapie kindle products that carry this story, a Delphi kindle collection for Hodgson which includes practically everything he wrote, and a “megapack” that is not as ambitious. In “The Thing in the Weeds” a ship at sea plies relatively uncharted sectors of the northern Atlantic Ocean. It has been pushed there by unusual conditions of the winds and currents. The troubles start with a bad smell after dark one night, as heavy, impenetrable fog creeps in. Then the attacks by ... something ... begin. The second section of the story, the following day, is more where the impulse for rational explanations is indulged, as it turns out to be a giant squid. This story could still fall within realms of the fantastic and/or weird—maybe squids don’t get this big or this aggressive. I don’t know. Maybe they don’t smell this bad. It feels plausible enough, maybe, for people to believe it in 1913. Still, in this case, just to be a second-guessing bitch, I think I’d have preferred less explanation and more ongoing bad news. When attacks occur at night at sea, and a dark monster of some kind is referred to as a “thing”—well, then, you know you’ve got real trouble. Monsters and other horrible stuff at sea was one of Hodgson’s specialties, as the original collection would suggest. The best of his seagoing stories at large is likely “The Voice in the Night”—the “thing” in that one is an inevitably encroaching fungus that tastes good when you’re starving at sea but has unfortunate effects. “You don’t want to know what happens to them,” as cartoon characters often warn one another. I would classify “The Thing in the Weeds” as reasonably good “night of terror” stuff as well as a perfectly competent seagoing tale. But ultimately it is too concerned for me with explanation, which renders it more of an adventure story. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—and Hodgson was always good at whatever he applied himself to—but adventure, lost world, and mostly or entirely invisible monster stories are not really what I’m looking for.

Listen to story online.