This article contains information about the short stories of William Hope Hodgson.
The Sargasso Sea Stories
Carnacki stories
Captain Gault stories
Captain Jat stories
D.C.O. Cargunka stories
Standalone stories described elsewhere The following short stories are described in separate articles. "A Tropical Horror" "The Voice in the Night" "The Derelict" "Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani"
Miscellaneous stories
"The Goddess of Death" "The Goddess of Death" was Hodgson's first published story, and appeared in 1904 in Royal Magazine.
A village is terrorized by a number of murders by strangulation, and the chief suspect is a statue of the goddess Kali stolen from a Thugee temple. The narrator is a visitor who believes there must be a rational explanation, but he finds it increasingly difficult to explain what is going on when the town's mysterious 8-foot statue is missing from its base and he sees what looks like the statue itself running through the night, carrying a cloth garotte.
Recruiting a friend to help him, the narrator leads a group to find the statue before it kills again. A volunteer is killed, but the narrator shoots at the statue, which disappears into a lake. Things look hopeless until the narrator consults the private journal of the Colonel who brought the statue from India. He learns of a secret catch in the statue's base which lowers and raises it, and which allows entry into a secret passage. Someone has been living inside the secret passage, and at its end, where the tunnel reaches the lake, he sees what appears to be another statue in the water. As he tries to pull it out, he realizes that it is an enormous "Hindoo" (Hindu) high priest wearing a white gown and a mask to imitate the statue; the bullets in fact did reach their mark and the mysterious man is dead. He was a "high priest" who had come to avenge the destruction of his temple.
"Terror of the Water-Tank" This story was first published in 1907 in Blue Book Magazine. Samuel W. Bruce, "William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918)". in Harris-Fain, Darren, ed. British Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Before World War I. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1997. pp.121-131. Hodgson introduces the story as follows:
Crowning the heights on the outskirts of a certain town on the east coast is a large, iron water-tank from which an isolated row of small villas obtains its supply. The top of this tank has been cemented, and round it have been placed railings, thus making it a splendid "look-out" for any of the townspeople who may choose to promenade upon it. And very popular it was until the strange and terrible happenings of which I have set out to tell.
The "strange and terrible happenings" begin with the discovery of a murder victim on the tank; he died by strangulation. The strangled man is the father of the narrator's fiancee, which leads to the narrator's involvement in the story. A local man named Dr. Tointon has been investigating; he has found that the strangled man's watch and watch chain are missing. The narrator notices that the mud around the tank is undisturbed, indicating that no one passed that way.
No real progress is made until several days later when a policeman who had been patrolling the tank is also found dead; he has been strangled as well. Although witnesses heard the man die, and would have seen anyone leaving the tank via the stairs, the mud beside the tank remains undisturbed. Tointon tells the narrator that he has not yet formed a conclusion, but will speak to him the following day.
The next day comes, but Tointon sends the narrator a note asking him to delay their meeting until late that evening. While waiting, the narrator questions Dufirst, the tank-keeper, a bearded black man whom he considers "an ugly little beast." In Dufirst's cottage the narrator discovers the first strangled man's missing watch and watch chain. The narrator summons the nearby police inspector and has Dufirst arrested. Later that evening we learn that the doctor is still out of town and has become seriously ill.
In the weeks that follow, Dufirst is tried and convicted of the first murder and scheduled for hanging. When Dr. Tointon recovers and returns, he is shocked to learn what has happened, believing that Dufirst is innocent. He assembles a team to investigate the water-tank that evening, bringing along a police constable, a loaded shotgun and several lanterns. Covering the lanterns, they hold a silent vigil on top of the tank. In the dead of night, a "very slight, slurring, crawling sort of noise" is heard. The lanterns are uncovered, and the doctor fires his shotgun.
The constable is found lying on the tank, but he is not dead—he has simply fainted from fright. The perpetrator is a "writhing yellow something, like an eel or a snake... flat as a ribbon." This creature has emerged from the tank, via a pipe, and climbed up onto the railing around the tank. The doctor's belief is confirmed; we learn that when he investigated the original crime he discovered slime on the tank railings and moisture on the collars of the victims. The exact nature of the creature remains a mystery, as its head has been destroyed by the shotgun blast, but the doctor believes that it is an abnormal creature because it developed under "abnormal conditions."
"Bullion" This story was first published in 1911 in Everybody's Weekly
A ship is transporting a valuable cargo of gold bullion packed into chests, and stored in a separate locked and sealed room. But when mysterious whispering is heard in the night, an investigation leads the first mate to think he is losing his mind; first chests are missing, and then they aren't!
The narrator, who is the ship's second mate, is aboard "one of the fast clipper-ships running between London and Melbourne at the time of the big gold finds up at Bendigo." The captain, named Reynolds, complains to him of a strange whispering in his cabin, and asks if the second mate will trade cabins with him. The previous captain, Captain Avery, had previously died in the room, of no known cause. Although the second mate agrees to the switch, believing the captain's concern to be nonsense, in a few nights he is hearing a mysterious whispering as well. The ship carries a very valuable cargo of gold bullion, so the mate gives orders to open and examine the special compartment holding the gold, which is positioned just below the captain's cabin in the lazarette. He awakens the captain, and they enter the lazarette and examine the compartment. The whispering can clearly be heard, but again the source of it cannot be found. The second mate and captain open the sealed room, and find that the thirteenth of the sixty chests is missing! However, when the captain leaves and returns with the purser, and they examine the chests again, they are all present and accounted for. No explanation can be found.
A round-the-clock guard is set up. The three officers (the captain and the two mates) take turns sleeping inside the bullion compartment itself, locked in with the gold, while the petty officers keep watch, pacing around the bullion compartment twenty-four hours a day. The guard inside the room is woken every hour to confirm that the chests are all there. When it is time for the narrator to stand guard, he awakens groggily to discover that a number of chests are missing, but believes that he must be dreaming. When he awakens, the chests are all in place. Shortly thereafter, the first mate actually dies during his watch, again of no apparent cause. No explanation can be found, although the strange whispering is heard again.
After the ship docks in London, bank officials come on board to remove the gold. Everything seems normal, and the watch is in place, but when the door into the bullion compartment is opened, the first mate on guard inside is found to be dead, again of no apparent cause. When the bullion is removed, all seems in order, until the bank reports that all of the chests actually contain lead! As additional cargo is unloaded, an especially heavy case arouses the second mate's suspicion, and he has the man operating the crane "accidentally" drop a case. It bursts open, and chests of gold bullion are found. An elaborate plot is revealed, in which conspirators brought aboard identical chests containing lead, stored in other cargo; the special compartment to hold the bullion was built with a sliding door and connection to a secret passage. In the dead of night the thieves gradually swapped the chests. To avoid detection by the guard inside the compartment they used a narcotic gas. Too low a dose allowed the second mate to awaken and see the chests missing; but too high a dose killed the first mate. The same narcotic gas evidently killed the previous captain, who was gassed to keep him from learning too much about the theft going on directly beneath his cabin.
"The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship" This story was first published in 1911 in the Grand Magazine.
A yacht comes perilously close to colliding with a swamped, dismasted, derelict vessel; only the captain's instincts prevent the crash, as he sees a flash of light in the darkness. The source of the light cannot be found, but the yacht's spotlight picks out the derelict. Investigating the vessel, the crew of the yacht decides to tow it, in order to collect money for salvage. They arrange a tow-line, and leave a skeleton crew of four volunteers, together with the bo'sun, aboard. A little later, the captain of the yacht is shocked to discover that the towline is no longer connected and the ship is a considerable distance from the yacht. The crewmen aboard the vessel are gone.
The same scenario plays out again; the second mate leads another group of volunteers, but the line is again found disconnected and the men gone. No explanation is found. The yacht keeps a close watch on the ship all night, and in the morning the crew again boards the derelict and inspects it thoroughly. A half-dozen armed men are left aboard, this time under the direction of the third officer. At dusk the mate's whistle is heard, and there is a loud shouting from the derelict, but by the time the crew of the yacht investigates again, the men are gone.
Finally, the crew of the yacht set up an iron-barred cage on the deck of the derelict, with a group of armed men inside, and they hold a vigil while the yachts hover expectantly nearby, ready to turn their spotlight on the derelict. In the dead of night a strange noise is heard, and the men in the cage fire a gun. The yacht trains its spotlight squarely onto the derelict ship, and the men are astonished to see that the rigging of the derelict ship is full of pirates. In the ensuing gun battle, all the pirates are killed. The derelict is not really flooded; while the upper part of the hold is filled with water and floating timber, it has been retrofitted with an airtight compartment underneath, accessible through the hollow lower masts, and is complete with electric lights, ventilation fans, and motive power. The lost men are found below, bound in chains but unharmed amidst a king's ransom in stolen gold.
"The Ghosts of the Glen Doon" This story was first published in 1911 in The Red Magazine.
Another floating derelict is the subject of an investigation because of a mysterious tapping. A brave (or foolhardy) man bets that he can spend the night aboard the allegedly haunted ship. Is the tapping noise produced by the ghosts of the men who drowned when it sank, or is there a more prosaic explanation?
We learn that the iron ship Glen Doon "turned turtle" (flipped upside-down) and trapped ten workers aboard. For twenty-four hours the ship floated upside-down. The tapping of the workers' hammers on the hull led rescuers to attempt to drill holes in the ship, but this just allowed the air to escape faster, and the men were drowned as the ship sank.