Read "Alone on a Wide Sea, Volume I" by W. Clark Russell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I may have slept for an hour or two; but for the light of the lamp, I believe, I should not have closed my eyes in rest, so unendurable would my spirits have found the heavy burthen of the darkness of the night. I opened my eyes. The lamp burned dimly. The vessel was rolling somewhat briskly, and I seemed to hear a louder noise of wind than I had noticed before falling asleep. The creaking throughout the cabin was ceaseless and distracting. The rudder jarred heavily upon its hinges, and every time a billow smote it I felt a shock as though the brig had struck on a rock.
On a sudden I heard a cry. It came faint and weak to my ears through the deck and through the door; but I heard it, and I caught the note of horror in it, and never shall I forget that cry! Whenever I recall it I think of the wailing scream of some strange wild tropic beast, wounded to the death and faltering to the edge of a river, and there sending its death cry into the quiet Indian night.