CCaruso_BP9

“A Voice in the Night”, by William Hope Hodgson, is a story essentially two parts. Part one is two sailors (Will and George) who come across a distress call in the distance as they are marooned in a fog. Part two is the telling of the stranger and his partners story of being shipwrecked from the Albatross and deserted on an island of some sort. The stranger explains the encounter that they had with a strange, gray fungusy lichen creature that has invaded and infested the shipwreck as well as the island where they had held up for solace.

The most interesting aspect of the story to me was the “sandy” bits of the beach where the shipwrecked couple had made their way ashore. The old man describes the entire beach in the lagoon to be covered in the sponge. All but curious patches of “fine white sand”, which were only described in that manner. The old man had no clue as to what the sandy white patches actually were. This descriptor had me thinking the most about where the sponge came from and what is was doing all over that lagoon? And what was the white sand?
I would speculate that the creature infesting the crew and the island is alien in origin.

The old stranger completes his story with the fate that he and his partner had succumbed to under the sponge. The discovery of small flecks at first growing on their skin is blown sky high when the old man seems to be touched by one of the blobs. There was a man under there, and all of the mounds that were described in the spaces of the ship were found to be the crew that was nowhere to be found when they came aboard. As creature reaches for the man, his lips are touched, and he gets a taste of the monster. His craving becoming insatiable, the man begins and continues to eat the gray mess. After this scene, the white sand can make sense as maybe the waste product of the creature eating. Crapping out bones and minerals that can not be digested and the bleached calcium mash lines parts of the beach where the mold cannot grow. The story ends with the sentiment of “the monster eating itself” and the old man rows off in the distance as the sun rises and Will and George are able to get a good look at the amorphous gray mass steering the boat.
A personal side note; It may seem trivial, but the language just could not grab me throughout the reading, making this my least favorite so far. Though the story itself was interesting and creative, it was just a little repetitive, and so prim and clean that it just felt sterile. Which is also kind of funny considering the story is about an obnoxious fungus.