Tales of Terror from the Black Ship Read Online Free PDF Page A

his fellows. He was better than all of them.
    That said, Tom had never planned to do it – or so, at least, he told himself afterwards. He was sure that he was not a bad person; leastwise not until that moment. He believed that things just happened to set themselves out that way. Fate lined up the skittles and he had no choice but to knock them down.
    After all, had young Tom Webster not been on watch that moonless night, had Harper not stumbled past him, drunk, and leaned over the gunwales – well, then Tom might never have grabbed those legs of his and tipped him over. It was fate, pure and simple. Or so he told himself.
    As Harper tumbled overboard, he shot out a hand – that tattooed hand – to grab the rail. Tom stepped back, not knowing whether to help him or not. Some pang of guilt did prick his conscience, but not enough to send him forward. He just stared at that hand and at the death’s-head tattoo, twitching and grinning as the tendons flexed and strained.
    Then Tom saw that Harper’s grip was improving. He could hear him groaning with the effort of hauling himself up. He could hear Harper’s feet scrabbling to gain purchase, and now he saw his other hand reaching up to grasp the rail.
    That small part of Tom – the wholly good, sane part of him – felt glad of it. But by far the greater part began to imagine what Harper would do to him when he was back on deck. In panic Tom looked about him, and the very first thing that his eyes laid sight on was a heavy hatchet left by the carpenter, embedded in a block of wood nearby.
    Without thinking further, Tom ran to where it was and yanked it free. Four or five steps took him back to Harper, whose face had now started to rise above the rail, his expression one of confusion and fury and fear all mixed up together. Tom lifted the hatchet over his head and struck.
    Harper had seen the attack coming. His eyes had bulged wide and his mouth opened to cry out, but the sickening blow from the hatchet severed his hand at the wrist and he instantly lost his grip and fell, hitting the water, all sound sucked under like the man himself.
    Tom watched for a sign of him among the waves and if he had seen one, he might even have raised the cry of ‘Man overboard!’ – but the sea had swallowed Harper up greedily. It was as if he had never existed, and though Tom felt a strange feeling in his gut, he could not truthfully have called it guilt or shame; relief was more like it.
    The severed hand lay on the deck like some hideous crab, the death’s head staring upward. Gagging with revulsion, Tom eased his foot under the thing and flicked it towards one of the nearby drainage holes that pierced the bulwarks, and then he kicked it overboard.
    Tom was suddenly horribly aware of being watched and turned slowly to look, fearing that someone had observed his crime. At first he saw nothing at all but the beshadowed ship, then slight movement near the mainmast revealed the source of his uneasiness – Pitch, the ship’s cat.
    Tom smiled when he saw him. Despite the fact he had never liked the creature – he was associated with Harper in his mind, and was so black as to seem more shadow than flesh and blood – he was so relieved that it was this dumb animal and not a crew member that he could have kissed the cat there and then.
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    Pitch strolled slowly out into the lamplight and sat looking at him with an expression that seemed to accuse, silently and malevolently.
    Had he seen what Tom had done? Had he understood? Tom knew that he should not have concerned himself with such matters, for the cat could hardly peach on him, but there was something about that creature’s cold stare that filled him with anger.
    Tom moved to chase him away, but before he had taken a step, the cat bolted through his legs and disappeared out of sight into the surrounding darkness. Tom cursed him under his breath, but he had more pressing concerns.
    He quickly cleaned the blood from the rail with water