Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters Read online

  PRAISE FOR QUIRK CLASSIC #1

  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

  By Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

  “A delectable literary mash-up . . . might we hope for a sequel?

  Grade A-.”

  —Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly

  “Jane Austen isn’t for everyone. Neither are zombies. But combine the two and the only question is, Why didn’t anyone think of this before? The judicious addition of flesh-eating undead to this otherwise faithful reworking is just what Austen’s gem needed.”

  —Wired

  “Has there ever been a work of literature that couldn’t be improved by adding zombies?”

  —Lev Grossman, Time

  “Such is the accomplishment of Pride And Prejudice And Zombies that after reveling in its timeless intrigue, it’s difficult to remember how Austen’s novel got along without the undead. What begins as a gimmick ends with renewed appreciation of the indomitable appeal of Austen’s language, characters, and situations. Grade A.”

  —The A.V. Club

  SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS

  BY JANE AUSTEN AND BEN H. WINTERS

  ILLUSTRATIONS BY EUGENE SMITH

  This book is dedicated to my parents—

  lovers of great literature and great silliness.

  Copyright © 2009 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2009931290

  eISBN: 978-1-59474-465-5

  Cover illustration by Lars Leetaru

  Cover art research courtesy the Bridgeman Art Library International Ltd.

  Interior illustrations by Eugene Smith

  Production management by John J. McGurk

  Distributed in North America by Chronicle Books

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  Quirk Books

  215 Church Street

  Philadelphia, PA 19106

  www.irreference.com

  www.quirkbooks.com

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  As his weeping relations watched, astonished, the dying man clutched a bit of flotsam in his remaining hand and scrawled a message in the muddy shore.

  page 10

  Mrs. Dashwood grasped a spare oar from its rigging, snapped it in twain upon her knee, and plunged the sharp, broken point into the gleaming, deep-set eye of the beast.

  page 30

  Colonel Brandon, the friend of Sir John, suffered from a cruel affliction, the likes of which the Dashwood sisters had heard of, but never seen firsthand.

  page 38

  As the party watched in stunned horror, Miss Bellwether was wrapped inside the quavering blanket-shape of the beast and consumed.

  page 63

  Edward sought to grapple with the rear quarters of the great fish whilst it opened its massive wet maw around Mrs. Dashwood’s head.

  page 104

  This fearsome, two-headed beast had been thriving in this dank weather, expanding its bulk, awaiting its chance to strike.

  page 126

  The Dome itself, the greatest engineering triumph of human history since the Roman aqueducts, had been constructed over a decade and a half.

  page 147

  The guests began a screaming stampede for the exit, shoving and fighting past one another to get out of the path of the death-lobsters.

  page 169

  Marianne strolled with Willoughby along the beach, and Monsieur Pierre hopped happily alongside them.

  page 200

  At present her only concern was the crablike stinging horror that had crawled inside her helmet and attached one of its fearsome chelicerae directly into her neck.

  page 234

  The Dome gave way quickly, with sheets of glass tumbling and slicing to the ground, followed by waves of water rushing in from all directions.

  page 256

  The hero was Colonel Brandon.

  page 300

  The Leviathan looked this way and that, its gargantuan eyes rolling wildly.

  page 327

  The ceremony took place on the shores of Deadwind Island early in the autumn.

  page 337

  CHAPTER 1

  THE FAMILY OF DASHWOOD had been settled in Sussex since before the Alteration, when the waters of the world grew cold and hateful to the sons of man, and darkness moved on the face of the deep.

  The Dashwood estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the dead centre of their property, set back from the shoreline several hundred yards and ringed by torches.

  The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. Her death came as a surprise, ten years before his own; she was beating laundry upon a rock that revealed itself to be the camouflaged exoskeleton of an overgrown crustacean, a striated hermit crab the size of a German shepherd. The enraged creature affixed itself to her face with a predictably unfortunate effect. As she rolled helplessly in the mud and sand, the crab mauled her most thoroughly, suffocating her mouth and nasal passages with its mucocutaneous undercarriage. Her death caused a great change in the elderly Mr. Dashwood’s home. To supply her loss, the old man invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it.

  By a former marriage, Henry had one son, John; by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady, respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother. The succession to the Norland estate, therefore, was not so really important to John as to his half sisters; for their mother had nothing, and their fortune would thus depend upon their father’s inheriting the old gentleman’s property, so it could one day come to them.

  The old gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew—but Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son—and to John alone it was secured! The three girls were left with a mere thousand pounds a-piece.

  Henry Dashwood’s disappointment was at first severe; but his temper was cheerful and sanguine, and his thoughts soon turned to a long-held dream of noble adventure. The source of the Alteration was unknown and unknowable, but Mr. Dashwood held an eccentric theory: that there was discoverable, in some distant corner of the globe, the headwaters of a noxious stream that fed a virulent flow into every sea, every lake and estuary, poisoning the very well of the world. It was this insalubrious stream (went Henry Dashwood’s hypothesis), which had affected the Alteration; which had turned the creatures of the ocean against the people of the earth; which made even the tiniest darting minnow and the gentlest dolphin into aggressive, blood-thirsty predators, hardened and hateful towards our bipedal race; which had given foul birth to whole new races of man-hating, shape-shifting ocean creatures, sirens and sea witches and mermaids and mermen; which rendered the oceans of the world naught but great burbling salt-cauldrons of death. It was Mr. Dashwood’s resolution to join the ranks of those brave souls who had fought and navigated their way beyond England’s coastal waters in search of those headwaters and that dread source, to discover a method to dam its feculent flow.

  Alas! A quarter mile off the coast of Sussex, Mr. Dashwood was eaten by a hammerhead shark. Such was clear from the distinctive shape of the bite marks and the sev
erity of his injuries, when he washed up on the shore. The cruel beast had torn off his right hand at the wrist, consumed the greater portion of his left leg and the right in its entirety, and gouged a ragged V-shaped section from Mr. Dashwood’s torso.

  His son, present wife, and three daughters stood in stunned desolation over the remains of Mr. Dashwood’s body; purpled and rock-battered upon the midnight sand, bleeding extravagantly from numerous gashes—but unaccountably still living. As his weeping relations watched, astonished, the dying man clutched a bit of flotsam in his remaining hand and scrawled a message in the muddy shore; with enormous effort he gestured with his head for his son, John, to crouch and read it. In this final tragic epistle, Mr. Dashwood recommended, with all the strength and urgency his injuries could command, the financial well-being of his stepmother and half sisters, who had been so poorly treated in the old gentleman’s will. Mr. John Dashwood had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do everything in his power to make them comfortable. And then the tide swelled, and carried away the words scrawled in the sand, as well as the final breath of Henry Dashwood.

  Mr. John Dashwood had then leisure to consider how much there might prudently be in his power to do for his half sisters. He was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was. But Mrs. John Dashwood was a strong caricature of himself—more narrow-minded and selfish.

  When he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his half sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. The prospect of his own inheritance warmed his heart and made him feel capable of generosity. Yes! He would give them three thousand pounds: It would be liberal and handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy, and offer to each the prospect of making a home at a decent elevation.

  No sooner was what remained of Henry Dashwood arranged in some semblance of a human shape and buried, and the funeral over, than Mrs. John Dashwood arrived at Norland Park without warning, with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her right to come; the house with its elaborate wrought-iron fencing and retinue of eagle-eyed harpoonsmen was her husband’s from the moment of his father’s decease. But the indelicacy of her conduct, to a woman in Mrs. Dashwood’s freshly widowed situation, was highly unpleasing. Mrs. John Dashwood had never been a favourite with any of her husband’s family; but she had never before had the opportunity of showing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it.

  AS HIS WEEPING RELATIONS WATCHED, ASTONISHED, THE DYING MAN CLUTCHED A BIT OF FLOTSAM IN HIS REMAINING HAND AND SCRAWLED A MESSAGE IN THE MUDDY SHORE.

  “It is plain that your relations have an unfortunate propensity for drawing the unwelcome attentions of Hateful Mother Ocean,” she muttered darkly to her husband shortly after her arrival, “If She intends to claim them, let Her do it far from where my child is at play.”

  So acutely did the newly widowed Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour that, on the arrival of her daughter-in-law, she would have quitted the house for ever—had not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the propriety of going and second on the madness of taking leave before an armored consort could be assembled to protect them on their journey.

  Elinor, this eldest daughter, possessed a strength of understanding which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counselor of her mother. She had an excellent heart, a broad back, and sturdy calf muscles, and she was admired by her sisters and all who knew her as a masterful driftwood whittler. Elinor was studious, having early on intuited that survival depended on understanding; she sat up nights poring over vast tomes, memorizing the species and genus of every fish and marine mammal, learning to heart their speeds and points of vulnerability, and which bore spiny exoskeletons, which bore fangs, and which tusks.

  Elinor’s feelings were strong, but she knew how to govern them. It was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught. Marianne’s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor’s. She was as nearly powerful a swimmer, with a remarkable lung capacity; she was sensible and clever, but eager in everything. Her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting; she was everything but prudent. She spoke sighingly of the cruel creatures of the water, even the one that had so recently savaged her father, lending them such flowery appellations as “Our Begilled Tormentors” or “the Unfathomable Ones,” and pondering over their terrible and impenetrable secrets.

  Margaret, the youngest sister, was a good-humoured, well-disposed girl, but one with a propensity—as befit her tender years more so than the delicate nature of their situation in a coastal country—to go dancing through rainstorms and splashing in puddles. Again and again Elinor warned her from such childish enthusiasms.

  “In the water lies danger, Margaret,” she would say, gravely shaking her head and staring her mischievous sister in the eye. “In the water, only doom.”

  CHAPTER 2

  MRS. JOHN DASHWOOD now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were treated by Mrs. Dashwood with quiet civility—she reserved for them the gills of the tuna at nuncheon—and by their half brother with kindness. Mr. John Dashwood pressed them with some earnestness to consider Norland their home; and, as no plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Dashwood as remaining there till she could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his invitation was accepted.

  A continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former delight—except for the patch of beach where Henry’s blood still stained the rocks, no matter how often the tide washed over them—was exactly what suited her mind. In sorrow, she was carried away by her sorrow; conversely, in seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess that sanguine expectation of happiness that is happiness itself.

  Mrs. John Dashwood did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the future fortune of their dear little boy, would be impoverishing and endangering him to the most dreadful degree. She begged her husband to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child of so large a sum? “Why was he to ruin himself and their poor Harry,” she asked, “whose little life was already horribly imperiled by living in a coastal county, by giving away all their money to his half sisters?”

  “It was my father’s last request to me,” replied her husband, “Arduously written out, letter by letter, using a bit of waterlogged beach-timber clutched ‘twixt the digits of his sole remaining hand, that I should assist his widow and daughters.”

  “He did not know what he was about, I dare say, considering the amount of vital fluids that had spilled upon the beach by the time he wrote it. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.”

  “He did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Fanny; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation comfortable. As he required the promise, and as I was clutching at bits of his ears and nose to give his face some form of face-shape while he required it, I could do no less than give my word. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home.”

  “Let something be done for your sisters; but that something need not be three thousand pounds! Think of the number of life-buoys such a sum can purchase!” she added. “Consider that when the money is parted with it never can return. Your sisters will marry or be devoured, and it will be gone forever.”

  “Perhaps, then, it w
ould be better for all parties if the sum were diminished one half. Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes.”

  “Oh, beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half as much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is, only half-blood! But you have such a generous spirit! Simply because a man is mauled by a hammerhead does not mean you must do everything he tells you to before he dies!”

  “I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have above three thousand pounds on their mother’s death, which will furnish a very comfortable fortune for any young woman.”

  “To be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry they will be sure of doing well; and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds.”

  “I wonder therefore whether it would be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives, rather than for them; something of the annuity kind, I mean. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable.”

  His wife hesitated a little in giving her consent to this plan. “To be sure,” said she, “it is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. If Mrs. Dashwood should live fifteen years, we shall be completely taken in.”

  “Fifteen years! My dear Fanny! Her life cannot be worth half that purchase! Even strong swimmers rarely make it that long, and she’s weak at the hips and knees! I’ve glimpsed her in the bath!”

  “Think, John; people always live forever when there is any annuity to be paid them; and old ladies can be surprisingly quick in the water when chased; there is something porpoiselike, I think, in the leathery wrinkliness of their skin. Besides, I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was charged by my father’s will with the payment of one to three old superannuated servants who had once dragged him from the mouth of a gigantic phocid. Twice every year, these annuities were to be paid, and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have been lost off the Isle of Skye in a shipwreck and cannibalized; and afterwards it turned out it was only his fingers above the knuckles that had been eaten. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother’s disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.”