Calibre-Web | The Voice in the Night

The Voice in the Night

Published: Nov 2, 1907

Magazine: The Blue Book Magazine, November 1907

[c] The Voice in the Night, (Blue

Book, November 1907) Hodgson's most famous story.

Somewhere in the North Pacific, the narrator who is

fogbound on a small vessel, is hailed by an unseen

man in a rowboat. The circumstances are suspicious,

particularly when the stranger, who asks for food,

will not come close to the ship and insists that the

lights be extinguished. But, the compassionate sailors

float a box of supplies to him. Some time later

the invisible rower returns and tells his story

from out of the fog. Victims of a shipwreck, he and

his fiancee have been living on a nearby island that

is covered with fungi. The fungus is not only omnipresent,

but some examples are shaped like trees and

humans. The narrator and his fiancee tried to avoid

the fungus, but after a time observed that it was

sprouting on them. There was nothing they could do,

for even carbolic acid would not kill it. When

their food was nearly gone, they yielded to temptation

and began to eat the fungus, though with strong

feelings of guilt. They do not expect to live, long.

As the stranger moves away, the fog lifts for a moment,

and the sailors see what seems to be a blobshaped

fungus in the rowboat. * Less sensational

than usual with Hodgson, and more thought-provoking,

particularly in its symbolic linkages of the fungus

with temptation and sin.