■illKL "Breath o/^^ Jungle Jiatne3 Pi-ancis ill I i ! i: ^J'^" "^ CORNELL / '^ UNIVERilTY fS'if iJBRARY Cornell University Library PR9599.D99B8t915 Breath of the ungle, 3 1924 008 156 089 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008156089 Breath of the Jungle iSreatl) of tjjt Sunglt By James Francis Dwyer Author of "The Spotted Panther," "The White Waterfall." "The Bust of Lincoln," etc. CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1915 Copyright A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1915 Published April, 1915 Copyrighted in Greit Britain 9. Jt. l|sU J^rtntlng (So.. flU^fniga CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I The Bronze Tiger 3 II The Soul Trapper 29 III The Red Face of Feerish Ali ... 53 IV A Jungle Graduate 85 V The Phantom Ship of Dirk Van Tromp 107 VI The White Tentacles . . . .137 VII The Three Who Fled . . . .171 VIII The Black Horsemen of Mir Jehal 207 IX The Orang-Outang Fight on the Pa- puan Queen 241 X The Blind Dog of El Corib . .257 XI The Golden Woman of Kelantan . . 285 XII The Little Gold Ears of Sleth . . . 323 [V] The Bronze Tiger THE BRONZE TIGER A Story of American Men in the Valley of Golan Ra and Their Encounter with the Tiger of Other Men's Gods /"^URTIS, the American consul, took this story ^^ down in longhand the day I staggered into his office. And Curtis believed it, too. He brought me round to his club, bought me a meal and a peg of brandy, gave me a suit of drill and a hand-shake that nearly cracked my knuckles. " Don't tell it too often when you get back to our country," he said. "Why?" I asked. Curtis laughed grimly and looked about him. " Well, they wouldn't get the atmosphere," he said, "and atmosphere is everything when it comes to believing a story. If you told that yarn in a club (Ml Fifth Avenue — No, I'm wrong. They'd believe you! The darn thing drips truth! " That was a compliment from Curtis. He doubted everybody, but he believed me. He gave me clothes, a meal, and a hand-shake, and he said that the yarn [3] "Breath of the Jungle" dripped truth. I don't know if it does, but here's the story: I met Masterson at Singapore. He was Ameri- can on the father's side, I'm sure of that. As to his mother — well, the consul told me that day in his office, that Masterson's grandmother was a Shan-Talok woman from the head of the Meinam. I don't know. There may have been a streak of color in Masterson, but I didn't notice it. Masterson was going up into the hills above Kopah to collect specimens, and I went with him as an assistant. I dislike work — that is, hard work — but you can't panhandle the Malay. The East is the real home of old Ma Poverty. Starvation walks around with a chawat round its loins, and Mr. Death works overtime. That's why I went to work helping Masterson gather specimens of snakes, lizards, bugs, and other things in the hills above Kopah. " It's nice and interesting work," he said. " For the lizards and bugs," I snapped. " They're being put in bottles and sent to America ; we've got to stay to do the recruiting work." That was a nasty bit of country round there. Body o' me! Yes! There are some places in the world that are worse than opium. I mean they're more dangerous. The blamed drug is in the air, [4] The Bronze Tiger in the hot dawns, in the white sunlight, and the velvety nights. I know it. And those hills above Kopah were worse than any other spot I had struck. That place was too old. There were wandering whiffs of perfume in those hills that got right into the back of my head and rooted out memories that must have been there for centuries — for a score of centuries most likely. They stirred up desires and dreams that must have belonged to ancestors of mine who lived when the mammoth was orna- menting the landscape. Curtis, the American con- sul, understood when I told him about it. Curtis had been in the East for fourteen years, and he had lost a lot of the cocksureness that he had taken from Washington. " This country is hell," said I to Masterson. " It looks as dead as Pharaoh's chariot mules, and yet it is alive." He was bottling a krait, one of those deadly little snakes that lie around in the sand with their heads out waiting to bite anyone or anything that comes near, and he grinned at me. "The Siyins say that the little grains of sand talk to each other," he said, "and I believe the Siyins are right. Yes, it's alive all right." That place made me sick. It was the sort of place that the Specters of the Lonely Places would pick for a convention ground. It was so. I tried [5] "Breath of the Jungle" to whistle " Dixie " once or twice in that Valley of Golan Ra, but I gave it up. That spot was too unhealthy for whistling. We were fixing our tents one afternoon when a real specter came down from the hills above that valley. He was a Burmese monk, and he was a fright. Body o' me ! Yes ! He was naked except for a dirty waist-cloth; his hair stood out around his head like a thorny halo, and his finger nails were twelve inches long. He was in keeping with the surroundings all right. He was just the sort of apparition you would expect to run across in a place like that. Masterson spoke to him in the Malay lingo, and he replied in English. Good English, too. Said he was a Buddhist monk from Moulmein, and lived in a little cave high up in the sandstone rocks. "And why do you stay in this place?" I asked. "It is a sacred place," he answered. "Buddha rested here on the way to the Temple of Paklan." " Huh! " I said. " Buddha must have done noth- ing else but rest. I've seen about two hundred bo-trees that mark places where he squatted." "But there is more tlian a bo-tree here," said the monk. "Why, what's here?" I asked. "The Man-eater of Golan Ra," he answered quietly. [6] The Bronze Tiger Now I think that Masterson had heard some- thing of that man-eater before the monk mentioned him. I'm nearly sure he had. The moment the apparition mentioned the thing, Masterson dropped his specimen-box and came closer to the freak. His eyes were mighty scared-looking too. "Did that happen here?" he asked. The freak nodded his head. " It happened right here," he murmured. "Let the story loose," I said. "I have never heard it." Afterward I was sorry that I had asked that greasy monk to tell the yarn, but feeling sorry for an action does no good. That fakir was some story-teller. Holy St. Christopher, wasn't he! That yarn went into ray brain through every hair I had in my head. He chanted it like a Batta chanting a war-song, and I just gasped as I sat on the hot sand and listened. Masterson was pop-eyed, too. That monk was a devil of a story-teller. He said that Buddha had rested at that place on his way to the Temple of Paklan. Budd was tired, mighty tired. He sat down in the shade to rest himself, and while he was sitting there a big man- eating tiger came down from the sandstone ridges and peeped at him from behind a thorn bush. Peeped at Buddha, mind you! Do you know that funny music the orchestra [7] Breath of the Jungle' grinds out when they want to give the audience cold shivers down its back ? Well, that monk could do that stunt with his voice. Wow, couldn't he just! He soft-pedaled on the descriptive business concerning that tiger pecking round the bush till he had Masterson and me rubbering at the stunted cactus clumps, thinking that another tiger might be peeping at us. The Oriental is the greatest story- teller in the world. He puts shadows into his stories, and those shadow masses stir your imagina- tion just the way it should be stirred. And that fakir in the Valley of Golan Ra was the boss of all the narrators we had ever met. That tiger liked the look of Buddha. Buddha was fat, and the tiger was hungry. The brute was a bit of a gourmet, and he had grown tired of eating skinny Negritos. They gave him indigestion. He licked his chops as he watched the fat saint mumbling his prayers, and he breathed so excitedly that old Buddha heard him and looked up. The tiger sort of grinned at Buddha, but Buddha took no notice. He was busy thinking out some mighty big problems, and he had no time for grin- ning at tigers. That's what the fakir said. The boss monk in the Temple of Paklan had been graft- ing a little, and the saint was thinking out a plan to fix him. That greasy monk was an actor of the first water. [8] The Bronze Tiger Wow, wasn't he a dandy ! He put up a piece of rock to represent Buddha, while he took the part of Mr. Tiger, and all the time he was pouring out the descriptive matter. The tiger came out from behind the bush and walked forward a little. He thought that Buddha might be a little short-sighted. That brute had been in the habit of seeing Malays and Negritos bolt in every direction when he poked his head around a corner, and he was just a little bit sur- prised to see old Budd still juggling with his prayer- cord. It hurt his vanity to see a respectable old gentleman ignore him completely, and he gave a little growl to show the saint that he was a real full-grown specimen of a hill tiger. That growl annoyed Buddha. At least, the fakir said that it annoyed him. The tiger had a breath, and the growl sent the odor of that breath under the saint's nose. He stopped praying and waved the tiger away, but the tiger's stomach was troubling him too much at that moment. Buddha looked fat and sweet to him. He crept a little closer, and the saint got mad. I'm just telling what that monk told to Masterson and myself in the Valley of Golan Ra. " Go back ! " said Buddha, but the tiger only drew his lips back in a sneer. I guess he thought that Buddha was having a little joke before he handed in his checks. [91 "Breath of the Jungle" "Go back to the hills!" cried the saint. "Go back at once ! " But that tiger had no word like retreat in his dictionary. Not much. He just walloped his ribs furiously with the end of his tail and crouched on his haunches before making a spring at the saint. Buddha was as cool as a mudfish according to the story of the monk. He just eyed the tiger, and the tiger returned the stare. That fool brute was wondering why Buddha didn't pick up his gown and bolt across the sand. That was what the Negritos used to do, and it always amused the tiger to do a little run after them before making an evening meal off them. " Now," said Buddha, " if you spring you will be sorry, very sorry." The tiger, so the monk reckoned, stiffened his muscles and licked his chops. Buddha's threats didn't frighten him much. He gave one little growl as a signal to himself to be ready, another little growl as a signal to be steady, and when he gave the third little growl he lifted himself into the air. But Buddha did something at that moment. Mind you, this part of the yarn is not mine, I'm only telling what the monk said in that dead Valley of Golan Ra. And that monk was a champion at telling a story. When he got up to the part where the tiger was going to hop at Buddha, he had us fairly creepy [lO] The Bronze Tiger with curiosity. Yes, sir ! That was no bit of fiction as far as he was concerned. It was twenty-two carat gospel, and that was why he was able to make us shiver like frozen hoboes when he got to the climax. "Yes, yes," gasped Masterson, "what happened then?" "Why," said the monk, sinking his voice till it was only a whisper, " when Buddha lifted his hand the tiger's spring was arrested. He stopped in mid- air. It was as if he were petrified instantly, and as Buddha continued to pray the old man-eater was turned slowly to bronze. . Into bronze, sirs. He became a piece of statuary, his body erect, his fore paws stretched out, and only the pads of his hind feet on the ground." I don't know whether it was the surroundings that made us scared, or whether it was the manner in which that fakir told the story, but when he finished we were pop-eyed. Wow, yes ! There was never a story-teller like that Buddhist monk, and there was never a place that fitted so well as a back- ground for such a yarn as that weird Valley. Masterson didn't speak for a few minutes after the freak had finished his story, then he moistened his lips and put a question. "Where is the tiger that was turned into bronze?" he asked. 'Breath of the Jungle' I expected that monk to say that someone had stolen that statue, but I got a surprise — a mighty big surprise. He just turned and waved his skinny hand toward a patch of thorn that was about five hundred yards away, and said simply, "He is out there." It's hard to make anyone feel what we felt in that wilderness. Curtis, the American consul, understood, but he had been fourteen years in that God-forsaken country. "Show him to us," said Masterson. It was dusk then, the curious tropical dusk that comes down like a purple veil before the thick night swoops down. The monk started to walk toward that patch of thorn, and Masterson and I followed. Masterson was all nerves at that moment. The day had affected him more than it had affected me. That air was like opium to him, and after he had listened to the story he walked like a man in a dream. If anyone could have canned that atmosphere of Golan Ra, they could have sold it to dope fiends. It was CMie of the most peculiar spots I had ever seen. There are thousands of places in the tropics that look unhealthy and feel unhealthy, but the Valley of Golan Ra was vicious. I don't know if I make my meaning clear by saying that. Curtis understood when I told him about it. " I know the atmosphere," he said. " it's poison- [12] The Bronze Tiger ous. The country has been left too much to itself, and it doesn't want a white man near." The consul was right. That valley didn't want Masterson or me. The monk fitted into the sur- roundings, but we didn't. We knew it, but we fol- lowed that fakir across the sand that was still so hot that you felt it through the soles of your shoes, and so dry that you could hear a lizard rustling through it twenty feet away. The monk circled the clump of cactus and stunted camel' s-thorn, then he stopped and pointed with his thin hand. "There he is," he whispered. "There is the Man-eater of Golan Ra ! " Body o' me! I got a shock when I looked at the spot he pointed out. The sight we saw hit us so hard that we stopped in our tracks with our mouths open. I know a little about tigers, so does Masterson, but the man who modeled the big bronze tiger at Golan Ra knew more about tigers than all the naturalists between Penang and Philadelphia. That's the truth. The Kachins of Northern Burma tell of the tiger-men who live and hunt with the tigers, and the man who made that statue must have been one of that breed. He must have lived with tigers. He must have watched them till he knew every muscle in their bodies. Wow, Wow, Wow ' What a statue it was! It flamed with life. [13] Breath of the Jungle" That was the genius in it. Genius! Why, when we came in front of that thing we stepped aside in fear! Someone will cry about Antoine Louis Barye when they read this. Barye never did anything like that. Never ! I've seen a lot of Barye's work, but I have never seen anything like that tiger. Holy St. Christopher ! No ! Barye's tiger in the Tuilleries is not to be compared with that brute in the wastes of Golan Ra. Barye's stuff is dead. That tiger in the valley between the hills was so full of life that you crouched instinctively as you came in front of him. I didn't wonder about the Buddha yarn being woven about that beast. Not much ! It was beyond the intelligence of those hill tribes to think that an artist modeled that thing. They gambled on super- natural influence, and of course they picked Buddha. Anyone with the smallest particle of imagination would think that the brute had been turned into bronze as he was about to spring. Masterson looked at me, and swallowed like a pelican. In the dim light the thing looked uncanny. It did so. And that walking bag of bones knew that he had handed us a surprise packet. "In the night," he said, turning to Masterson, "he is very lonely. He calls to the tigers in the hills, and they come down and keep him company." [14] The Bronze Tiger "Who calls?" I snapped. " Buddha's tiger," said the monk. " He calls to his brothers up in the sandstone ridges, and they come down to him. There are a hundred tigers here every night." The East is a curious place. I wanted to laugh, and I couldn't laugh. I thought I could rid myself of the irritating fear that gripped me if I were able to ridicule that old naked fool's story, but I couldn't raise a grin. The look of that tiger choked back any laughs that I tried to put forward. Masterson stooped and looked for tracks in the sand, then he looked at me with a stupid look on his face. The atmosphere of that valley had played the mischief with Masterson's nerves. He looked like a man who has been hit with a sand-bag. " They come every night," murmured the monk. " They come down to him when he cries." " Huh," I grunted, " they're real obliging tigers, ain't they?" I don't know whether the story or the place upset my courage, but I was scared — scared in that curious way when your courage seems to be penned in a corner fighting against a fear that you can't get a grip on. "Do you know that no harm can come to one who is near him?" asked the monk. "How?" I growled. " If anyone places his hand on him and cries out [IS] 'Breath of the Jungle" to Buddha, no harm can come to him," he answered. " No tiger will touch him. The Holy Buddha has willed it so. Only a few days ago a Malay, pur- sued by a tiger, rushed down here from the hills and touched the statue. When he did so the tiger that was pursuing him ran away." You would think that a remark of that kind would make us laugh, but it didn't. It was getting dark, and that place had a look that chilled our blood. But we didn't want to show the white feather in front of that dirty Buddhist monk. Not much! We had picked up our rifles when leaving the camp: it isn't safe to wander round without a gun in those hills, and when that fakir told the story about the tigers coming down from the hills I got a fool notion into my head to draw his bluflf. Masterson must have got the same idea at the exact moment I pounced on it. He looked around at a couple of stunted trees that were about twenty yards from the statue, and then looked at me. "We might wait and see if there is any truth in the yarn," he said. "I mean the tale about the tigers coming down from the hills." " Sure," I answered. " We'll wait by all means." "What are you going to do?" asked the monk. "We're going to stay around and see this tiger gathering," I said. " We'll build a platform between those two stunted trees." [i6] The Bronze Tiger "Can I stay?" he asked quietly. "Stay if you like," said Masterson. "Help us get some timber together." Masterson and I worked like madmen collecting timber to build a platform between those two small trees, and the monk helped us without speaking. And all the time it was getting darker in that valley. Darker? Why, it was that dark when we finished the perch that we felt as if we were crawling through something tangible as we climbed onto the platform we had hurriedly put together. We couldn't see the bronze tiger, but we seemed to feel him. That's a curious way of putting it, but it's the only way that can explain our sensations. That piece of work had made a mighty funny impression on us, and we could easily understand how stories had sprung up about it. In that dreary waste of sand and stunted thorn bush that tiger seemed to be the only thing alive. Alive, mind you ! The rocks were dead, the hills were dead, the cactus and stunted trees, and even the monk, looked as if they held on to existence by the skin of their teeth, as the saying is, but the tiger seemed to flame with life. Genius is a wonderful thing. They tell a story in the Shan states of a man who made a hamadryad that was so wonderfully lifelike that the natives died with fear after looking at it, and I could believe [17] Breath of the Jungle" that story after seeing the Tiger of Golan Ra. He was aUve to that greasy monk. Body o' me ! Yes ! Right in my heart I knew that the fakir worshiped the thing, and as we crouched on the shaky plat- form between the two trees I knew that he was staring toward the spot where the tiger stood. "It's devilish quiet," muttered Masterson, after we had been squatting there for about an hour. " Quiet ? " I growled. " I'm praying for an earth- quake to come along and burst this infernal silence." Wow, wasn't it quiet! I guess we could have heard a British-India steamer hoot in the Bay of Bengal if that silence strata had run all the way to the coast. That was how it seemed to me. And every minute of that terrific silence seemed to act like a vise that was squeezing out of me everything that was human and vital. I don't know whether it was that way with Masterson, but I had to wriggle my limbs occasionally just to rid myself of the belief that I was becoming petrified. We were on that platform about four hours before anything happened. Then matters began to get lively. The monk touched our sleeves with his long fingers, and we put our best ears to the breeze. "They're coming," whispered the fakir. "Who?" gasped Masterson. "The tigers," breathed the monk. "I can hear them coming down from the hills. When they get [i8] The Bronze Tiger on the sand, you will hear Buddha's tiger cry out to them." I felt inclined to knock that freak off the plat- form when he said that. I felt that we had done a foolish thing in waiting round that place, and I blamed the monk for making us build that perch. A kind of fear gripped me at that moment that I had never experienced before. Never! A nigger can hear a tiger long before a white man can hear him, and it was some minutes before I heard a noise. Masterson heard them before I did. He was crouched close to me, and I felt his muscles stiffen with excitement. Masterson was all nerves, just then. The atmosphere of that valley, together with the story of the monk, had upset him com- pletely. "They're coming," he breathed. "They're coming." "Hush," I whispered. "Be quiet." In the tremendous silence that was over that place, my skin seemed to feel the soft padding of those brutes approaching. Tigers ? Of course they were tigers! And you can understand how it struck us after listening to the story that the freak had told. I pictured him grinning in the darkness. There is nothing pleases a nigger better than to get the laugh on a white man, and that fakir had sensed our skepticism when he unbottled that yarn. [19] 'Breath of the Jungle' I gripped my rifle and peered over the edge of the platform into the darkness that heaved beneath us like masses of black cotton wadding. Wow, wasn't it dark ! And out of that infernal thick night came little snuffles and snarls that made me put a few pertinent questions to myself. " What brings them to this spot ? " I asked myself. " Why the deuce do they come down from the hills to the bronze statue ? What f akery is at the bottom of it?" Just as I was trying to puzzle the matter out, the monk gripped my arm and brought his mouth close to my face. "Now Buddha's tiger will cry out to them," he whispered. " Listen ! " I got a chill down my spinal column when he said that. I was listening with every inch of my skin. I wanted to hear that cry. That naked monk had me scared right down to my shoes, and I knew that Masterson was just as bad. Mind you, Masterson had plenty of grit at most times, but all his grit had been sucked out of him by the surroundings on that evening at Golan Ra. " Listen ! " whispered the monk. " Now he will cry out to them to let them know that he is lonely." The fakir timed it exactly. The cry came at the moment he finished speaking. It split the silence like a projectile of sound, and it nearly made Masterson [20] The Bronze Tiger leap from the platform. It was a scream with a point to it. It knocked me so silly that I couldn't think of a thing. "Did you hear?" whispered the monk. " Buddha's tiger is calling." I tried to answer that freak, but I couldn't. That scream had paralyzed my tongue. I damned myself for nine different kinds of a fool as I crouched waiting. I knew how Masterson was. He was about eighteen degrees worse than I was. I peered into that darkness, feeling mighty angry and mighty foolish. I pushed the rifle over the edge of the platform, and waited for something that would let me know where one of those brutes was prowling. The monk sensed what I was about to do, and his long fingers clutched my arm. "Don't!" he whispered. "Don't! You will annoy Buddha's tiger if you shoot his kinsfolk here. Listen ! He is calling again." That cry came again, and I was as stupid as a stufifed mongoose. My, didn't it chill me ! I wanted to let fly at one of the brutes that snufHed and snarled in the dark, just because I thought that the report of the rifle would bring back my courage. Noise is a great spine-stiffener for the noise-maker, I can tell you. " Let him cry I " I gasped, and as I spoke the cry [21] "Breath of the Jungle' went up again. It was an animal's cry, but it was a cry of fear that would chill the heart of a road agent. " Don't shoot ! " cried the monk. " Don't ! " He made a grab at my arm, but I pushed him back. A huge pair of emeralds appeared under the tree at that instant and I let fly. Body o' me! Didn't that shot start a rumpus! I'd give a few dollars to know how many tigers were around that statue. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, that's all. Those hills are famous for tigers, and it was some convention that had assem- bled there. You bet it was. Masterson was pretty funky just then. I was scared, but he was clean out of his wits with fright. I was looking for another pair of green eyes to help my courage a bit, but he reached over and gripped my shoulder. " Let them alone ! " he gasped. " Let them alone!" " Shucks ! " I spluttered, and just at that moment I caught sight of another pair of blazing emeralds, and I let fly. Suffering sinners ! Didn't I get a shock when I banged at him ! That tiger must have been as big as the bronze statue. He must have been. The bullet stirred his temper, and the brute sprang at us. He couldn't reach that platform, but he did as [22] The Bronze Tiger much damage as if he had reached it. The big brute cannoned against one of the stunted trees, and the trvink of that tree had been bored through by the teredo ant ! My hair prickled mighty badly as I felt that heavy brute strike it. The tree started to crack near the ground, and with a dickens of a hubbub the timbers of the platform, Masterson, the mad monk, and myself flopped heavily to the sand ! A piece of timber walloped me on the back of the head as I struck the ground, and I guess it was some minutes before I regained consciousness. It might have been an hour for all I know. I tried to get up, but I couldn't. I listened to see if I could hear the tigers, but there wasn't a sound. Some- thing had stampeded the brutes at the moment the platform fell, and they had bolted for the hills. I was just wondering what had become of Masterson and the monk when their voices came out of the silence, and I listened. You bet I did. When I told this part of the story to Curtis, the American consul, he nodded his head and told me about Mas- terson's grandmother. I guess Curtis was right. If she was a Shan-Talok woman, a night like that was the kind to bring the breeding out of him. Do you know what that brace were doing? They were praying to Buddha at the very top of their lungs. "Keep your hands on the tiger and pray!" shouted the monk. " Don't take your hands from [23] Breath of the Jungle" him. He has saved you from the tigers as the Holy One willed." I tried to crawl toward them, but that smash on the back of the head was too much for me. I fainted away again, and as I fell on the sand I heard Mas- terson repeating a singsong prayer that the Buddhist priest was chanting through his nose. It was dawn when I came to my senses. I lifted myself up and stared about me, but there were no signs of Masterson and the monk. That big bronze tiger stood up in the dawnlight with his paws stretched out in front of him, but the fakir and his convert, they had both cleared out. " Took him away before dawn, so that he wouldn't see anything," I muttered, and then I dragged myself over to the statue. It was mighty plain to me what brought those brutes from the hills when I reached the bronze tiger. There had been a little feast there if I could judge by the look of things. Some confederate of that greasy monk had sneaked up in the darkness and left a live gibbon tied to the statue, and it was that gibbon that had howled when he knew the tigers were on him. He had kept quiet till he knew that they had winded him. I guess that little feast had been spread for them every night for months, so the monk had a sure guess when he told his little story to us. [24] The Bronze Tiger That's mighty near all I have to tell. Two weeks afterward I found the empty cave where the monk used to live. Under a stone near the door was a note from Masterson asking me to tell his employers at Washingfton that he had thrown up his job. That was all. A leprous Negrito told me that Masterson and the monk had gone to a Buddhist temple farther up the mountains, and I let him go. I had enough of those hills. I told Masterson's boss in Washington that he had thrown the collecting job. The boss was a big fat man, so I didn't bother telling him the story of that night at Giolan Ra. "Thrown it?" he cried. "Why, there's no one out there who could give him more money than what we were giving him. Do you think there is ? " "Search me!" I said, and with that I left him there to puzzle the matter over. He wouldn't have believed me if I told him everything. But Curtis, the consul, believed it. He took me to the club, gave me a meal, a peg of brandy, and a suit of drill. And he said that the yarn dripped truth. But Curtis had been out there long enough to understand the coun- try and to know what effect the atmosphere of a place like Golan Ra would have on a man who had a dash of color in his blood. [25] The Soul Trapper II THE SOUL TRAPPER The Story of a Man Who Went Mad and a Woman's Fight for His Life "TDUT a white woman did come to this spot," said the German naturalist, stretching him- self on the plaited Dyak mat. "There is no place on the earth where a man goes that a woman will not follow if the necessity arises, and for that I thank God. This Samarahan River is as near hell as you can go without making a hole in the wall, yet a woman came here." "A collector?" I asked. " No, no ! I would hate to see a woman come to this place to trap monkeys or gather bugs, or do anything like that. This woman came to — well, she came to trap a man's soul." "Tell me," I said. Hochdorf, the greatest naturalist in the Malay Archipelago, who knew more of the ways of animals than any of the seventy collectors employed by the big Amsterdam firm, spoke soothingly to a black monkey that whined in the shadow. The tropical [29] "Breath of the Jungle' night had rolled down from Asia, and a tremendous silence had come in its train. A new moon rode high over the tops of the jungle, where sandalwood, teak, kaladang, and mohor, in league-wide masses, resembled an ebony base upon which the dome of the heavens was softly resting. " I will tell you first of the man," said Hochdorf quietly. "We will call him Hanslaw, that is as good a name as any, and he came from Baltimore, over there in the United States. He had the bunga- low on the other side of the river, the one just below the Dyak village that I showed you this morning, and after he was here some time we became great friends. He was a fine naturalist, nope better. He loved his work, and he would not stop from dawn till midnight. "'Hanslaw,' I would say, 'you are a fool to work like that. You are just what all you Americans are, just a bundle of nerves, and if you go pounding along like that, something will stop all of a sudden in your head, and you will go up like a rocket on the Kaiser's birthday.' "'I've got to make good, Hochdorf,' he would say. ' I've got to make good, and make good quick. Work is nothing if you have the right incentive to work, and by all that is holy, I have that incentive.' "That was all he would say. Just that. Work was nothing to him. The hours that he spent in a [30] The Soul Trapper wet singlet curing and fixing things did not trouble him. I envied him. Who would not ? Just because there was a woman over there in the United States, six thousand miles from this little hell in Borneo, he could not feel tired. It is wonderful. " ' You are an old bachelor and you do not under- stand,' he would say. " ' Bachelors have done some big things,' I would snap back at him. " ' Perhaps so,' he would laugh, ' but by the bones of the great Cuvier, Hochdorf, it is the man that tlie woman is watching who has put the marks of his knuckles on this old mud ball.' "He was only a big boy, but he was a great naturalist in spite of his youth. " It was no good speaking to him about taking it easy. Through the smoke from that stinking slush lamp he saw her eyes looking at him from way over in Baltimore, and he would not stop. In the night sometimes I would get out of my bed and look across the river, and no matter when I looked his light would be still burning. " Then one day the thing that I said came about. He snapped up. Something in the back of his head gave way like a piece of elastic. He was working on the skeleton of a sintia wurmbii, the big orang- outang, and he laid down his knife quietly, very, very quietly, and he went out and started to play [31] Breath of the Jungle" with the little pebbles on the bank of the river. Gott steh uns bei! It was so. It chilled my blood. " ' Hanslaw,' I said, ' what is up, my friend ? Get up and leave those pebbles alone.' " But he would not get up. He sat there on his hams like a hill Kyan, and he played with those little bits of stone like a three-year-old baby. It is not nice to see anything happen like that. Not to a man with brains. And Hanslaw had brains. Ja! " What was I to do with a man in that condition in this little hell? Seventeen miles down the river was Brechmann, but Brechmann knew less about such things than I did. Hanslaw had blown up — puif — just like that. It made me sick and it made those Dyaks wonder a bit. It was the first example that those fool niggers had ever seen of the quick- lunch methods you have over there in the United States. They had never seen a man's brain go pop, just because there was three hundred pounds of pressure on a machine that was not strong enough to bear half that amount. " This place is not so bad if one is in the best of health, but if you are sick — well, it is hell to be sick when you are out on the rim of the earth. If Hans- law had met with an accident or if he were suffering from malaria it would have been different. The Dyaks cured my leg with a plaster of blue mud when I nearly cut it off with an ax. And I had much [32] The Soul Trapper quinine if it had been a fever. But it was neither a cut nor a fever. A belt had slipped from one of the little flywheels in the back of Hanslaw's brain, my friend, and a job like that is something that God Almighty must attend to in His own good time. " For eight days he loafed around the bungalow, doing no work and talking little, and in those eight days something happened that was peculiar. It was more than peculiar. When that little belt slipped ofif the flywheel in his head, it made him lose con- nection with that part of his brain that had been built up through centuries of civilization. Do you understand? He just crawled out of a husk that civilization had put around him. The veneer of the centuries peeled ofif him like the skin of the milk snake when he sloughs it in the rirro grass, and Hanslaw, the greatest naturalist that had ever come to this infernal archipelago, became a savage. It was what you might call a backward migration of the soul. Or perhaps the soul left him altogether. People say that we cannot see into those other lives that we have left behind us, but Hanslaw went back into one of them. Ja! The thing might not have happened if he was in the city at the time the belt slipped off his mental flywheel, but here the jungle was all around him, and the jungle is impressive. It lays its hands on men who are in their right senses, so you can guess how it gripped Hanslaw [33] 'Breath of the Jungle' when he had ripped oflf the protecting cyst that civil- ization had slowly wrapped round him. Then there were the Dyaks to copy from. Do you see ? "His brain was like a bit of new clay, and it picked up impressions like a dry sponge sucks up water. He flung off his clothes, tied a chawat of bark cloth around his waist and did things native fashion, and it hurt me to see that. He broke up specimen cases to make fish traps, and he did not know they were specimen cases when he broke them up. Yet he had lectured me about Humboldt a few nights before ! " On the eighth day Brechmann came up the river because I had sent him a message telling him what had happened, and we held a consultation about Hanslaw. He was fishing with the Dyal