Availability: Usually ships within 48 hours. Ships from and sold by Babblebooks.com.Running time: 2 hr 39 min
The unabridged classic on MP3 audio, narrated by Anais 9000. Three playback speeds on one disk; etext edition included. Running time: 2.6 hours (slow), 2.4 hours (medium), 2.2 hours (fast).
Chapter I: Charon Makes a Discovery
Charon, the Ferryman of renown, was cruising slowly along the Styx
one pleasant Friday morning not long ago, and as he paddled idly on
he chuckled mildly to himself as he thought of the monopoly in
ferriage which in the course of years he had managed to build up.
"It's a great thing," he said, with a smirk of satisfaction--"it's a
great thing to be the go-between between two states of being; to have
the exclusive franchise to export and import shades from one state to
the other, and withal to have had as clean a record as mine has been.
Valuable as is my franchise, I never corrupted a public official in
my life, and--"
Here Charon stopped his soliloquy and his boat simultaneously. As he
rounded one of the many turns in the river a singular object met his
gaze, and one, too, that filled him with misgiving. It was another
craft, and that was a thing not to be tolerated. Had he, Charon,
owned the exclusive right of way on the Styx all these years to have
it disputed here in the closing decade of the Nineteenth Century?
Had not he dealt satisfactorily with all, whether it was in the line
of ferriage or in the providing of boats for pleasure-trips up the
river? Had he not received expressions of satisfaction, indeed, from
the most exclusive families of Hades with the very select series of
picnics he had given at Charon's Glen Island? No wonder, then, that
the queer-looking boat that met his gaze, moored in a shady nook on
the dark side of the river, filled him with dismay.
"Blow me for a landlubber if I like that!" he said, in a hardly
audible whisper. "And shiver my timbers if I don't find out what
she's there for. If anybody thinks he can run an opposition line to
mine on this river he's mightily mistaken. If it comes to
competition, I can carry shades for nothing and still quaff the B. &
G. yellow-label benzine three times a day without experiencing a
financial panic. I'll show 'em a thing or two if they attempt to
rival me. And what a boat! It looks for all the world like a
Florentine barn on a canal-boat."
Charon paddled up to the side of the craft, and, standing up in the
middle of his boat, cried out,
"Ship ahoy!"
There was no answer, and the Ferryman hailed her again. Receiving no
response to his second call, he resolved to investigate for himself;
so, fastening his own boat to the stern-post of the stranger, he
clambered on board. If he was astonished as he sat in his ferry-
boat, he was paralyzed when he [...]
Next
