A Shipment of Mute Fate

Originally Aired: January 6, 1957 In Suspense #680, "A Shipment of Mute Fate," Christopher Warner boards the ocean liner Chanquei in Venezuela with a dangerous cargo: a live bushmaster snake destined for a museum in New York. Captain Wood initially refuses to transport the deadly serpent, citing his responsibility to the passengers' safety, but orders from the head office force him to relent. The snake is secured in a reinforced sea chest in the captain's cabin, where Warner visits it obsessively, always finding it motionless and watching with beady, unblinking eyes. As the ship sails into the Caribbean with deceptively calm seas, Warner develops an increasingly morbid dread of the creature. He cannot shake the feeling that the bushmaster is waiting for something. Meanwhile, stewardess Mother Willis harbors her own secret aboard ship, smuggling her pregnant cat Clara in defiance of the new chief steward's orders. When a heavy swell rocks the vessel, Warner's foreboding intensifies, and the question haunts him: what is the deadly serpent waiting for?