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Title: Static
Author: Wallace West
Release date: March 16, 2024 [eBook #73175]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Street & Smith Corporation, 1926
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STATIC ***
STATIC
By Wallace G. West
Charles Markley carried his radio set to darkest Africa,
where the natives took it for a god. A native girl learned
different, and just as Markley’s life was in extreme danger
something happened that changed the outlook on things.
Water slogged heavily against the hull of the Niger packet _Lagarto_.
Close at hand the jungle, waving ghostly arms in the moonlight, seemed
to be giving a horrid imitation of great beasts floundering and
slobbering at the edge of the river. On the deck of the _Lagarto_
lounged Captain Angus Todd, who in spite of his name, was ending his far
journeying and hard-driving life as the master of a clumsy freight boat.
He was tall, and lean, with that Scotch type of leanness which can best
be understood by pronouncing the name “Sandy” with the “a” broad. He
smoked a foul pipe and occasionally spat into the greasy water below.
“You mind, Mac,” he said finally, tapping the dead ash from his pipe on
the rail. “You mind that I’m growing a bit older these days, and the
more I think on it, the more I feel that Africa’s no the place for any
white man.”
“Yes,” came the answer, evidently emanating from a black bundle slumped
in a steamer chair under the awning. “I’m thinking I’ve heard that idea
expressed before--several times in fact. Maybe you’re right, but you
can’t deny that the English make big money here, buying palm oil and
rubber for about nothing. And selling geegaws, trade gin and trade cloth
for ten times their value--even though the natives are getting wise to
traders’ tricks--converting the heathen and making the nigger women wear
calico dresses. You’ll admit that’s an accomplishment.”
“Aye, but the price, man. Think on that a bit.” The captain paused and
watched a native canoe with its lonely paddler drift softly past the
ship and disappear in the moon glow. Then he resumed. “Tell me, Mac, how
many men has your company sent out here in the last ten years? I hate to
think--twenty, anyway. Great, strappin’ youngsters, most of them, pink
and white and blond, brought up to play cricket and football. It fair
makes my heart bleed to think how they came out for the bonus--to make
enough to marry, perhaps, or to lift the mortgage. And they usually got
the bonus, too, but have you noted them at the end of their three years.
Sallow and racked with fever. Wishing to Heaven they were dead, many of
them, and soaked with booze, a lot. Most of them spent that bonus and a
great deal more keeping out of the grave after they went home. I’m glad
the company’s making you agent at Maraban at last, Mac.”
“It’s the Scots that keep the Empire running,” grunted Thomas
MacAllister, the man in the deck chair. “And me at Maraban as kernel
clerk for more years than I care to think on, doing my work and that of
the agent, mostly, and not complainin’ overmuch, mind you. Then, when
the agent blew up, shipping him down river and holding things together
until they sent up another Boy from Home to take his place.”
“Aye, I understand, and the home office scratching its head and
wondering what is the matter at Maraban,” replied the captain. “Gosh,
they don’t know what this stinkin’ hole is. ‘The White Man’s Graveyard,’
’tis called, but that’s merely a name outside. At least those fellows in
the Scriptures got out of the fiery furnace after a bit. We never do. So
it was Timmy Smith you took out this time?”
“Yes--and Timmy was a nice chap when he first came. Manicured his
fingers--dressed for dinner and all of that. Shaved every day, Heaven
forbid. Well, you saw him last week. Bleary and smeared, in a bath towel
and singlet, with a native huzzy for a wife, and a sick mind. After two
years and a month. Went completely off his nut the day after you were at
Maraban. I had to take him out to Forcados. Headquarters down there gave
up in despair and appointed me in his place. Todd,” the new agent
continued savagely, puffing rapidly at his cigarette, which winked
brightly in the shadows, “it’s only leather bellies like you and me who
should be sent up to the lonely stations where all the people one sees
are negroes. I tell you, they’ve got to come to it. I never knew but one
youngster who came through decently. That was Charles Markley. ’Member
him?”
“Well, rather,” chuckled the captain. “I was just reading in the _Times_
about his success as a radio wizard back home. Seems he’s succeeded in
eliminating static, or something.” He kicked another deck chair into
being and sat down. “Do you remember when he first came out, Mac? I
brought him up river while he was nursing the worst grouch I ever saw.
“It was such a night as this, all silver and black, I recall, when I
took him up to your hell’s hole at Maraban. The jungle was sloshing and
squawling over there, and Markley sitting about where you are, staring
at the moon with hard eyes, set in a face sour as spoiled milk. He was
rather handsome, tall and long-legged as the best of the English are,
and I liked him.
“I came up with an idea of giving him some friendly advice, like I do
all your slaves, MacAllister, though a fine lot of good it does. Well,
after we’d started a conversation, or rather, after I had made some sort
of attempt at it, I said: ‘Mr. Markley, you want to be verra careful
about the amount of whisky you drink in this climate. It’s deadly.’
“Maybe that wasn’t very tactful, but how can you be tactful with an
overgrown, sulky boy. Anyway, he turned round with a snap and says: ‘Mr.
Todd,’ says he, ‘I intend to make a big dent in the liquor supply of
Nigeria inside of the next three years.’
“Which gave me a sort of shock, for most of the boys come out maundering
of high ideals, clean living and Sir Galahad morality--when they first
arrive, that is.
“‘And you must be careful about mixing up wi’ the native girls, at all,
at all,’ I went on. ‘You’ll be thinking I’m insulting you now, but men
will do strange things when they’re lonely, and it always leads to
trouble.’
“‘I’m sorry to disappoint, Mr. Todd,’ he snaps, ‘but that’s just what I
want to inquire into immediately. If you should happen to know of any
reasonably clean, good-looking negro girl of not over seventeen, I wish
you’d buy her for me, or whatever their beastly custom is here, and send
her over to Maraban as soon as you can. I’d greatly appreciate it, and
pay well.’
“You can imagine that shut me up right quickly and I left Mr. Markley to
his own sour thoughts, whatever they were.
“The _Lagarto_ tied up at the oil wharf at Maraban next morning, and he
got ashore, dressed in an old pair of khaki breeches, a sleeveless
jersey and a pair of tennis shoes. He looked a sight, and I half
expected the sun to shrivel him up before my eyes. His baggage consisted
mostly of two huge boxes which he grudgingly admitted contained radio
apparatus, a few books, among which I saw one named ‘Studies in
Pessimism’ by some German author--a few others, equally dismal, and ten
cases of Scotch whisky. I suppose you discovered this soon enough, but
it fair made me stagger when I thought that it was over and above the
whisky already at the station. He said good-by decently, and I left him
standing there, thinking black thoughts and batting at the flies which
buzzed around his head.”
“And a fine time I had of it the next few months,” grunted MacAllister.
“The kid almost pestered me to death trying to discover new short cuts
to hell. He started drinking like a fish immediately upon his
arrival--cocktails, highballs, rickeys--he had a book of recipes for
about two hundred different drinks, and went through it methodically,
mixing his own and swilling ’em down in a way which no good
Presbyterian--and I am one, even in this hole --could tolerate.
“‘Mr. MacAllister,’ he would say. ‘Let’s have a drink,’ and if I
accepted, he would say ‘MacAllister, let’s have another,’ and after that
it was ‘Mac, another won’t hurt us.’
“If we’d continued that way the station would have been a total loss, so
I had finally to refuse to drink with him. He didn’t appreciate my point
of view at all.
“He raided the medicine cabinet and experimented with the little opium I
had there, the result being that he was violently ill for some time. The
whole thing was laughable, if he hadn’t been so damned serious about it,
or if he had been content to quit the foolishness after a while. It’s
bad enough, captain, to see a man disintegrate little by little under
the influence of the heat and stink, but cripes, it’s positively
indecent to see one conscientiously trying to kill himself.
“He kept everlastingly at me to find him a girl, but right there I
balked. It was so cold-blooded and morbid. ‘But I tell you, old thing,’
he’d beam at me, ‘really a nigger girl is part of the white man’s
burthen, if one believes the plays and novels published nowadays. It’s
quite _de rigueur_, donchaknow,’ he would drawl.
“Just as luck would have it, the girl did turn up, a few weeks later.
She was black as ebony, and graceful as the devil’s wife, if he has one.
The tale she told was that she was a cousin of one of the house boys,
and that her family had died of sleeping sickness, or something, so that
she had to come to live with her last relative. Well, you can guess what
happened after that. Markley simply appropriated her. Not, I sincerely
believe, because he particularly wanted her, but because she fitted into
some gloomy picture of his final demise which he had built up. ‘Mac, my
boy,’ he grinned at me after he had moved her into the bungalow, over my
almost tearful protests. ‘She is rather chic, you know. Wouldn’t she
make a sensation in London with that figure and that hide.’ I went out
and cursed the day both of us were born, and I’m not usually a
blasphemous man, Todd.”
“It must have been about a month after he got the girl that I saw
Markley for the second time,” the captain took up the tale. “I had some
stuff for the station and tied up at the wharf. Things looked about as
usual. A few natives with loaded canoes, a few Kroo boys busy tidying
the compound. In fact I began to think that Markley had got over his fit
until I reached the bungalow veranda. He was sitting there, with his
bare feet sticking over the rail. It startled me somewhat. Apparently,
he had accomplished in two months what even the most soft-willed white
man seldom reaches in years. I’ll admit I admired his determination.
“He was dressed in a singlet, while about his waist was a bath towel,
which automatically defined his state of disintegration. He was in the
bath-towel stage, the next step being for him to ‘go native’ and spend
the rest of his days rotting in some nigger village, ashamed to let
white men see him.
“‘Greetings, cap’n,’ he called. ‘Come up and refresh yourself. Ruth,’ he
shouted to some one inside, ‘bring a glass for a gentleman, a clean one.
Pardon me,’ he added, turning back to me, ‘I was referring to the glass,
not the gentleman, though I suppose it would be equally appropriate.’
During the pause which followed I tried to imagine who this ‘Ruth’ might
be. A white woman could have come up the river, but it was very doubtful
that it would have happened without my knowing of it. Then Ruth came out
of the bungalow. MacAllister, I’ll agree with you. She was
remarkable--lithe and clean-cut, with some forgotten Arab strain, I
suspect. And she wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothes.”
From his chair, MacAllister snorted in disgust.
“‘Lemme introdush you,’ Markley grinned, shambling to his feet and
grasping her shoulder to steady himself. ‘Ruth meet cap’n, cap’n meet
Ruth’--all that sort of thing. ‘You may,’ he continued owlishly, ‘marvel
at her name. I have bestowed the historic appellation because the
original Ruth was also a gleaner. I have insisted on the décolleté for
two reasons, first because, dreshed that way, it will be impossible for
her to carry off her gleanings when she leaves the bungalow. As a result
of this precaution I have lost none of the silver plate or gilded
photograph albums. Second, because it’s so awful hot that I feel sorry
for any one who has to wear clothes.’ He unwound the bath towel, swabbed
his face, neck and chest and reshipped it around his waist. Then he sank
back into his chair and pushed the warm whisky and soda toward me.
“I suppose I should have got his receipts for the shipment and left
immediately, for he was certainly beyond the pale of tolerance, but the
lad was so plainly lonely and miserable that I sat sipping the whisky,
which was really good, and listening to the tale, which, between periods
of weeping, he unfolded. I suppose you’ve heard it all before, haven’t
you, Mac?”
“He was tight as a clam with me when it came to family history,” replied
MacAllister. “Besides we didn’t talk any more than necessary after he
took that woman in.”
“He came from Devonshire, he said,” the captain resumed. “Attended
Oxford and some technical college----”
“Yes, he used to rub it in a little about being an Oxford man, I
remember, after he learned I had attended King’s College back in the
dark ages,” growled MacAllister.
“He said there had always been plenty of money,” Todd resumed. “His
father paid all bills without much complaint. Some difficulty with his
eyes kept him out of the war, so that he finished his courses,
specializing in mechanics and electricity. Naturally he became
fascinated with the radio. That was back in 1919, you remember, when the
whole thing was in its infancy, and commercial broadcasting was hardly
thought of. A lot of experimenting was being done, however, and Markley
hit upon a great idea--to make a radio receiving amplifier loud enough
to fill great auditoriums and provide entertainment for vast
congregations. The only trouble was that when music or voices were
amplified so many times, the static was amplified along with it,
resulting in intense vibrations and awful screeches and yells, so that
the program itself would be inaudible. There was also some danger, he
declared, if the amplification was great enough, of shaking down the
ceiling of the auditorium itself. The boy claimed he had overcome this
difficulty.
“‘Captain,’ he blurted, patting my shoulder tenderly, ‘cap’n, you shee
before you the one and only, triple-guaranteed eliminator of static in
this little world. Gaze upon him well, cap’n. The odds are running three
to one it will be your last chance.’
“Was he lying or not, Mac?”
“I almost wish he had been,” growled the new agent. “But he was telling
you strict truth. Radio was the only thing he was interested in, even at
Maraban. He dug his apparatus out of the packing cases the week he
arrived, and rigged it up in a deserted sheet iron shack. There he’d
sit, tinkering with it and drinking--straight whisky, too--until almost
morning, to the great awe of the niggers and the total abolishment of
sleep at the station. A few broadcasting stations were opening up over
the world, especially in America. You remember that was the summer every
one went crazy over the things. His set was big enough to get them all,
too. With the amplifiers cut in, the music would blare through the whole
compound at night, until I threatened to sleep in the jungle. When he
tuned in on a speech or a bedtime story--he preferred those--the voice
sounded like that of a giant, with ten times the volume of ordinary
tones, but clearer and more free from noise than the best phonograph. It
fair had the natives hypnotized. They used to take little offerings to
the door of the shanty to appease the wrath of the juju inside. ‘Big
mouf’ they termed him.
“The only difficulty, as Markley explained to me once, in a moment of
friendliness, was that he had to keep eternally balancing the static out
of it with special condensers. I remember one morning he went to sleep
over the thing. Pandemonium broke loose. The little shack seemed almost
to bounce off the ground as the set went out of balance and the static
seeped in. The row was deafening. I ran down and jerked all the switches
I could find to shut it off, but Markley slept through it all, under the
radio table. I had an awful temptation to smash the thing, Todd. Only
the fact that I am a good Presbyterian saved me. Lucky it did.”
The captain chuckled, refueled his pipe and continued: “The boy told me
things began to look pretty bad in England. No one wanted to finance his
inventions, least of all his father, who decided his son wasn’t as
bright as he had hoped. What broadcasting was being done was purely
experimental, so that there seemed little chance of financial success
from his idea.
“The upshot was that his father promised to cut off his allowance if he
didn’t go to work--all the big electrical corporations refused to meddle
with the thing, and, as a last straw, the girl in the case--oh, yes,
there was one--sided with his father.
“That’s about all, except that since no one had confidence in him--since
his sweetheart didn’t love him for himself alone--he got very tearful at
this point--he decided to come to darkest Africa and romantically go to
hell in a hurry, principally, of course, so that the girl would realize
her mistake too late. He got a position with the African Produce
Association--was made an agent, in fact, due perhaps to father’s
influence, and came out prepared to cut all the corners.
“‘You see,’ he explained, looking at me owlishly. ‘I’d read so much
about what the tropics do to a man--how unless he’s made of steel they
will wreck him within a year or so, no matter how he fights. Well, I
just thought it would be interesting to cut out the preliminaries. Go
the whole route, as you might say, at once, and have it over with.’
“With that he lapsed from tears into slumber and I departed, feeling a
wee bit old and helpless--wishing there were some way of shaking him out
of his romantic notions and back into reality. But what can a man do
when a boy gets it into his head to kill himself.”
“And I thought the same thing during the next few months,” groaned
MacAllister. “Things went from bad to worse. Oh, the station went along
fairly well, with everything running smoothly and the oil coming in
regularly. Markley, in the mornings before he had a chance to get too
soused, did what little work there was for him to do, well enough, but
the rest of the time he would sit on the veranda, swilling liquor in a
manner I never thought possible. What a constitution he must have had! I
could have sworn he hated the stuff, but was drinking it on some kind of
bet with himself. In a way things got as bad as they did later when
Timmy Smith came, and yet again they didn’t. Markley wouldn’t allow the
boys to loaf. He made them keep the bungalow and compound reasonably
clean, and he kept all his socks under lock and key because he had read
somewhere that the native cooks particularly prize them as coffee
strainers. After that woman came--her native name was Eta something or
other--he made her keep his quarters spick and span clean, and I’ll have
to admit she did it well. But he drank day and night. It got so that he
was just one jump ahead of D. T.’s, and I can’t help feeling that he was
betting with himself just how long it would take him to achieve them.
“His only diversion was the radio. He never tired of it. Used to take
Eta down to the shack and amuse himself trying to explain the workings
of the set to her in a mixture of pidgin and mission English.
“One day he called in all the natives about the place, including a
number of canoemen from upriver, and explained that the shack concealed
the white man’s God, whose voice they heard. No harm, he declared, could
come to those under the protection thereof. Blasphemy it was, and myself
a good Presbyterian. I remember Markley was especially drunk that day.
His eyes were burning and his hands shook. Hanging onto a chair with one
hand, gesticulating wildly with the other, he made a speech to the
natives in such an amazing mixture of English, Latin and pidgin as must
have rivaled the gibberish of their own witch doctors.
“About a week after that a runner from King Tolo appeared at the station
with a message. Now Tolo, as you know, is an imperialist with the idea
that he owns a large per cent of the Niger. He has no more love for the
English than they have for him, but he just manages to keep inside the
deadline. The message was written by some mission-bred negro who had
drawn it up in what he conceived to be strictly legal form, with such a
sprinkling of “hereinbefores” and “whereas’s” as to make the muggy paper
almost unintelligible. After we had deciphered it, it became apparent
that King Tolo was greatly hurt and grieved--that one Eta, a cousin of
the king--now residing with the agent at Maraban, one Charles
Markley--had been married without the knowledge or consent of the
aforesaid Tolo, or worse yet, that she had never been married. Now,
therefore, the said Tolo demanded as his rightful marriage portion, the
following, to wit: A list which included, among other impossible things,
a case of whisky and two rifles.
“Markley laughed for the first time since he had been in Maraban when he
got the gist of it, and his yellow, dulled eyes seemed to brighten a
little. It was his first show of human feelings in about eight months.
He immediately translated the message to Eta, getting quite appreciative
over the fact that the thirty-second cousin of King Tolo was worth two
Mauser rifles.
“‘How does it happen you never mentioned your high connections before,
Ruth,’ he demanded.
“‘No savvy, boss,’ she replied, uncomfortably. ‘You no ask me,
mebbe-so.’
“After the messenger had departed, first being duly kicked by
myself--Markley was too shaky--things began to happen. Trade slackened
abruptly. A houseboy was found badly cut up just outside the compound
and several of the Kroo boys stole a canoe and deserted downriver.
“To cap the climax Markley called me into his room and, pointing to an
entirely imaginary black panther cat which he swore was squatting on his
bed, asked me if I wanted to shoot it, or tame it.
“It was a week later, I think, that another messenger arrived. This time
he came, not directly from Tolo, but from the chief witch doctor of the
realm, one Buhu, I gathered, who had heard of the magic of the
god-who-talks.
“The messenger sat circumspectly at a distance and explained his errand.
Buhu, it seemed, had conceived some very potent ideas as to the powers
of Markley’s magic. Now, in effect, he proposed a sort of bout between
them.
“As the messenger explained:
“‘Chief Tolo he say mak’ so-so little-bit palaver, Buhu and Boss Markley
upriver. Take ’long juju big mouf, mebbe so. Mebbe so he not come talk
juju belong along Buhu, trade not come along company house. Mebbe so he
come, Tolo not ask dash for Eta. Palaver set.’
“Which, freely translated, meant that Buhu was becoming anxious about
the presence of bigger gods than his own on the Niger, and had persuaded
Tolo to put the screws on Markley so that he could get a look-see at
this strange spirit. If we came, Tolo would agree to let bygones be
bygones, withdraw his request for the marriage price of his
thirty-second cousin and allow trade to return to the compound. If not,
things would be rather dull at Maraban in the future. Also I rather
suspected that Buhu was planning a coup of some kind to get the loud
mouf juju into his possession, for there is no more jealous person in
the world than a witch doctor when he thinks some one is stealing his
thunder. I suppose they live so close to the edge of discovery that they
become jumpy.
“Markley had listened to the message from his usual seat on the veranda,
leaning forward and trying to focus his eyes on the messenger. I
expected him to roundly curse the black, and slump back in his chair. In
that world of whisky haze in which he was living those days, nothing
seemed to matter very much. Instead, he wobbled to his feet and replied
loudly:
“‘Go speak your so-so witch doctor Buhu. Tell him Big Boss Markley come,
mebbe so two days. Juju big mouf he come, too, mebbe so, mebbe not. He
big juju fo’ sure. Eta come ’long big boss. By an’ by, my juju he win,
Eta stay along me. By an’ by, Buhu win, Tolo take Eta and have dash,
too. Palaver set.’
“As soon as the messenger had departed Markley set about preparations
for the trip. In his half-delirious mind, it became a huge joke, reality
being all mixed up with the whisky phantoms which peopled his brain. He
wouldn’t listen when I told him that there was probably danger in the
undertaking, but proceeded to pack all the radio apparatus in a big
case. Then calling Eta, he produced a bright crimson shawl, a pair of
dancing pumps of the same color and a brilliant bandanna, which he had
ordered from Forcados on the last boat, and presented them to her,
declaring that she must be decently dressed when visiting a cousin.
After that he took a long drink and declared himself ready to start.
“That was a queer trip. I had wanted to stay at the station, but Markley
wouldn’t hear of it. Said there was no danger at Maraban--that the big
show would come at Mobungo, one of Chief Tolo’s villages, and he might
need me there. We locked the bungalow and store, placed things in charge
of the most trusted negroes--a poor policy, but the best I could do, and
started upriver in the station’s motor launch.
“I steered. Markley sat in the middle where he watched the engine. Eta
sat near the bow, staring steadily upriver. She was a weird creature,
that girl. Light on her feet as a shadow and about as quick. She never
said a word to anybody except Markley, though even with him she seemed
to hold aloof. She was always obedient and met all of his sometimes
eccentric demands upon her without complaint, but her sloe-black eyes,
slanting here and there in an almost Oriental fashion, sometimes gave me
the creeps.
“Strangely enough, Markley brought only a quart of whisky with him, and
used that very sparingly. ‘Dickie,’ he explained to me, ‘I fear I must
pass up the nectar for a time. But there’s plenty of it back at the
station, or will be if those damned negroes don’t run off with it. When
we get back, I’ll celebrate. Maybe you’ll condescend to take a few,
too.’ That’s the way he rambled on, but I could see a new sparkle in his
bloodshot eyes, and began to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something in
him besides his vicious habits after all. I suppose he was the type who
lives on excitement, though why he came to Africa to find it I never
could understand.
“We reached Mobungo after a two-day run. The usual gaping crowd met us,
but before we were ashore, Tolo himself, with a military escort, plowed
through the jam and greeted us. Have you ever seen Tolo, captain?”
“Not since he was the prince charming of the Niger, years ago,” Todd
chuckled in the darkness.
“He’s still about the same. Wears flowers in his wool and all that, but
he’s getting older and fatter, and dreaming of empire instead of fair
women. He’ll get into serious trouble sometime soon. However he treated
us civilly enough, giving us a hut in which to clean up a bit.
“That evening we met him at the imperial palace, such as it was, for an
audience. The room was furnished in Afro-American style, with a
phonograph, a player piano and a nickel and white barber chair serving
as a throne. Tolo was there, tricked out in his royal robes. Beside him
squatted Buhu. The latter wasn’t all that I expected--just a lean,
hungry-looking, rather young and rather shiny individual who did nothing
but teeter back and forth on his toes and scowl at us.
“The meeting began in one of those duels of silence--the man who speaks
first being considered the weaker character--but Markley wasn’t up to
the strain of it and almost immediately broke silence by demanding why
the devil Tolo had sent him a note like that.
“The old chap hemmed and hawed, but finally explained that there was no
threat implied, merely a friendly contest between rival demons.
“Markley was willing to let it go at that, so that without much further
parleying, details were arranged for the exhibition next morning, and we
turned in for the night, leaving the niggers dancing and prancing in
some kind of a ceremonial outside the hut.
“‘Mark,’ I asked, as we were undressing in the dark. ‘You noticed that
phonograph in the throne room. How do you expect to make much of an
impression when they’re acquainted with such things.’
“‘Sound and fury, sound and fury, me lad,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m not
expecting to impress the king of Buhu, much. But one must always
consider the mob. Whatever Buhu is up to, he’s out to impress the
rabble--and so are we. Damn, I wish I had a drink.’
“The next morning we were escorted to the sacred cavern where Buhu did
his tricks. It was large, about one hundred feet deep, with a wide,
high-arching mouth and appeared to have been caused by erosion at some
time when the river bed lay in front of it.
“Here Buhu kept his charms and talismans, most of them in a stinking
heap in one corner. There were bones, both human and animal, strange
herbs, and charms, of all varieties. The air was rank with
unidentifiable stinks. A fire was kept burning at the entrance, with the
result that the place was full of smoke most of the time, which,
whirling and eddying inside, caused a really ghostly effect.
“At the invitation of the morose witch doctor Markley here set up the
mouthpiece of big mouf, the intruder. We rigged some lights from a
storage battery and soon had everything in readiness. At the magician’s
command the whole population of the village--about three hundred
persons--shuffled hesitatingly into the cavern.
“Personally I thought Buhu’s show was pretty poor stuff. It wouldn’t
even have made a hit on the variety stage at home. There were a few
parlor magic tricks, a clever attempt at group hypnotism which succeeded
fairly well with the natives, but left Markley and myself untouched, and
a final tableau where Buhu seemed to vanish in a cloud of red smoke,
immediately reëntering the cavern through the audience. That was really
deserving of applause, but didn’t impress the crowd greatly. Perhaps the
trick had grown stale by repetition. It was the climax of the show and
Buhu signed for us to begin.
“Markley had placed the apparatus under a dim red light, and with the
true showman’s instinct had posed Eta, in her crimson shawl and shoes,
beside it. After making a somewhat wobbly salaam to the machinery he
immediately got busy, tuning in on a London station with very little
amplification, so that just a whisper of sound filled the cave. It was
an organ recital. The natives shivered and shifted their positions. As
he began cutting in amplification the notes swelled and seemed almost to
solidify, the sounds shuddering in the great cave like the wings of an
imprisoned bird.
“Even I, who had become well acquainted with the possibilities of the
thing, felt the spell. Every note was perfect.
“Over the dials, Markley, dressed in a dark-green robe with a cowl,
which he had concocted from some trade cloth for this occasion, seemed
truly a priest making his invocations.
“As the last notes of the program died away the natives broke into
exclamations of wonder, admiration and awe. Their love of music was
aroused, and it was easy to see that they had forgotten Buhu and his
sorceries.
“Waiting until the excitement had abated somewhat Markley picked up
another station, this time at New York. Some one was making an
address--strangely enough--upon the wonders of radio, the miraculous
advancement it had made in the last year, and so on.
“I had noticed sometime before that Eta had left her place beside the
cabinet. Now I saw her in earnest converse with Buhu, across the cave.
It gave me quite a shock and I watched closely. Evidently the witchman
was in the dumps. His head sagged. His hands quivered. He knew when he
was beaten. But Eta actually was shaking his holiness by the shoulder. I
could see her lips moving in a vehement exhortation of some kind,
although not a word of it could be heard above the voice of the orator.
“‘A new era for the world has begun,’ thundered the voice to the
uncomprehending natives. ‘Men are being drawn closer together by this
new marvel, and will become one great brotherhood. If only there can be
found some way to eliminate static our problem will be solved, and, I
wish to add, that great monetary rewards now are available to the man
who will step forward to eliminate this great obstruction to radio
communication.’
“I glanced at Markley. He was listening, spellbound, forgetful of
everything that was transpiring. I glanced back at Eta. She had risen
and was moving slowly toward us. Buhu was whispering vehemently to
several of the natives. As I watched, Eta approached, and, without
warning, placed her glossy back tight against the loudspeaker’s mouth.
The spell was broken. The orator’s voice died to a murmur, completely
blocked by the obstruction.
“Suddenly Eta’s voice rang out, speaking in purest native dialect, which
I understood fairly well, but which Markley had never cared to learn.
“‘Oh, my people,’ she cried, lifting her arms high. ‘This man is an
impostor. He is not the servant of this great voice.’
“‘What the hell, Ruth,’ broke in Markley sharply, ‘get out of the way.
You’re spoiling the show.’ He half rose to push her away, but a huge
black who had slipped behind him unnoticed in the excitement, gripped
his shoulders and held him to his seat. At the same moment I felt the
warning pressure of a knife point on my neck.
“‘Oh, my people,’ continued Eta, unperturbed, ‘ye know that I am the
sister of Buhu, master of life and death, and that I was sent by my
brother to spy upon this wicked foreigner. You know that I have suffered
greatly at his hands. But Eta, the tigress, is patient. Know, all ye,
that I have learned that this man is not the priest of the voice. He is
a great magician who holds the god in his power, even as the wicked
snake which charms the singing bird. Know also that I have discovered by
watching closely how to break the spell and release the voice from its
prison. It has promised me to make the people of Tolo the greatest on
the river. Away with the white witch doctor,’ she shrieked. ‘I will be
its priestess.’
“I realized that Eta must have been using her eyes closely during the
last months. She knew how to operate Markley’s radio and this whole
affair was a plot to take it from us.
“‘Kill the white men,’ Eta screamed in a frenzy. ‘Kill, kill----’ But
Markley had at last caught the meaning of her harangue, and with a roar,
shook himself free from his captor and leaped at the girl. But his
coordinations were shaky from his whisky swilling and he fell an easy
victim to the dozen or so warriors who sprang forward. He went down,
senseless from the blow of a club, lying where he fell, while Eta,
tearing his green robe from him, clothed herself in it and took up her
position behind the dials. I suppose I should have gone to his rescue,
but how could I, with a black devil gripping my neck with one hand and
holding a knife as long as my arm in the other.
“The orator in the loudspeaker continued his talk uninterruptedly,
telling of the great things which might occur in the world due to
radio’s magic--but, suddenly, his voice was broken by a frightful
squawk! My heart jumped. The set was going out of balance without
Markley’s expert hand on the dials. Confidently Eta bent over the
cabinet, but it seemed she had forgotten something essential, for the
machine let out a louder shriek, this time a sound like the scraping of
a titanic file across glass.
“Suddenly pandemonium broke loose. Somewhere between Africa and New York
there must have started a thunderstorm. Such frightful noises I had
never believed possible. The cave fairly rocked with them. The
loudspeaker seemed to dance about the platform.
“The black holding me let loose his grip and sprinted for the cave
mouth. So did all the natives in fact, but unluckily, perhaps, because
the vibration had set up a miniature earthquake inside the cavern, great
stones and quantities of earth began falling from the roof. I saw more
than one negro brained or broken as I crouched close to the wall. I had
dragged Markley’s body out of the greatest danger and leaned over him,
with my hands over my ears.
“Only Eta stuck to her post, twisting the dials back and forth, but only
succeeding in making the vibration greater. It sounded as if all the
devils in hell were shrieking, and would yell forever. The cave filled
with dust. Through it I could see the girl, quiet and tense, working
doggedly--hopelessly. But all things have an end. As I watched in the
dim red light, a giant boulder, detached after a repose of centuries,
tumbled from the ceiling, crushing both Eta and the radio. A last
despairing scream and then all the noise ceased. Do you know, Mac, in
spite of the fact that I had hated her, I felt damned sorry.
“That’s about all,” MacAllister concluded softly. “Markley was merely
stunned and came round after a while. The natives had fled the village,
so that it was an easy matter to return to the boat and start downriver.
“Markley acted like another man. Whether he had realized that he could
now go home to a chance of success with his inventions or whether the
shock had cleared his half-insane mind, I don’t know, but he confessed
to me shamefacedly that he had been acting like a damned fool. Said he
had wanted to quit the whole game long ago--that he hated the taste of
whisky, but his pride wouldn’t let him stop halfway on the road to the
infernal regions.
“We buried what was left of Eta in the river and Mark was rather cut up
about it. That, with the whisky he had been drinking so steadily brought
a reaction. He almost winked out with a case of acute alcoholism, but we
managed to pull him through at Maraban. I took him downriver a few weeks
later, bound for home, looking like a ghost, but on the road to
recovery.
“That ends the story, Todd. While it doesn’t point a moral exactly,
being the exception which maybe proves the rule, let’s go down anyway
and take a drink to all of us who fight this rotten, fascinating
river--and fail.”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the September 1926 issue of
Sea Stories Magazine.]
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