In my last post I provided a link to "Ben Blower's Story" by Charles Fenn Hoffman and have flagged it as the 37th best horror short story in my countdown of the Top 40 from 1800-1849. In this tale of sensation, where readers live through the harrowing and horrific experiences of the protagonist, shipmate Ben Blower is trapped inside the boiler of a ship that is quickly filling with water. Consider this passage:
My whole condition—no—not all of it—not yet— my present condition flashed with new horror upon me. But I did not again swoon. The choking sensation which had made me faint, when I first discovered how I was entombed, gave way to a livelier, though less overpowering, emotion. I shrieked even as I started from my slumber. The previous discovery of the closed aperture, with the instant oblivion that followed, seemed only a part of my dream, and I threw my arms about and looked eagerly for the opening by which I had entered the horrid place— yes, looked for it, and felt for it, though it was the terrible conviction that it was closed—a second time brought home to me—which prompted my frenzied cry. Every sense seemed to have tenfold acuteness, yet not one to act in unison with another. I shrieked again and again—imploringly—desperately—savagely. I rilled the hollow chamber with my cries till its iron walls seemed to tingle around me. The dull strokes of the accursed pump seemed only to mock at while they deadened my screams.
Stilted language near the end and the deus ex machina surprise appearance of the mallet and "marline-spike" in Ben's pocket, keeps "Ben Blower's Story" from claiming a lower spot on the list of the Top 40 horror short stories for the half century in question.
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