Lang Andrew
The Disentanglers
‘What’s that?’ asked Logan, leaping up and looking towards Cagayan Sulu.
‘The Berbalangs,’ said Bude coolly. ‘You are wearing the ring I gave you?’
‘Yes, always do,’ said Logan, looking at his hand.
‘All the men have their pearls; I saw to that,’ said Bude.
‘Why, the noise is dwindling,’ said Logan. ‘That is odd; it seemed to be coming this way.’
‘So it is,’ said Bude; ‘the nearer they approach the less you hear them. When they have come on board you won’t hear them at all.’
Logan stared, but asked no more questions.
The musical boom as it approached had died to a whisper, and then had fallen into perfect silence. At the very moment when the mysterious sound ceased, a swarm of things like red fire-flies, a host of floating specks of ruby light, invaded the deck in a cluster. The red points then scattered, approached each man on board, and paused when within a yard of his head or breast. Then they vanished. A queer kind of chill ran down Logan’s spine; then the faint whispered musical moan tingled in each man’s ears, and the sounds as they departed eastwards gathered volume and force till, in a moment, there fell perfect stillness.
Stillness, broken only by a sudden and mysterious chorus of animal cries from the George Washington. A kind of wail, high, shrieking, strenuous, ending in a noise as of air escaping from a pipe; a torrent of barks such as no known beast could utter, subsiding into moans that chilled the blood; a guttural scream, broken by heavy sounds as if of water lapping on a rock at uncertain intervals; a human cry, human words, with unfamiliar vowel sounds, soon slipping into quiet – these were among the horrors that assailed the ears of the voyagers in the Pendragon. Such a discord of laments has not tingled to the indifferent stars since the ice-wave swept into their last retreats, and crushed among the rocks that bear their fossil forms, the fauna of the preglacial period, the Ichthyosaurus, the Brontosaurus, the Guyas Cutis (or Ring-tailed Roarer), the Mastodon, and the Mammoth.
‘What a row in the menagerie!’ said Logan.
He was not answered.
Bude had fallen into a deck-chair, his face buried in his hands, his arms rocking convulsively.
‘I say, old cock, pull yourself together,’ said Logan, and rushing down the companion stairs, he reappeared with a bottle of champagne. To extract the cork (how familiar, how reassuring, sounded the cloop!), and to pour the foaming beverage into two long tumblers, was, to the active Logan, the work of a moment. Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet.
‘Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,’ he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone:
‘Is your exhibit all right?’
‘Fit as a fiddle,’ answered Logan through a similar instrument.
‘Our exhibits are gone bust,’ answered Captain Noah Funkal. ‘Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?’
‘Just launching a boat,’ cried Logan.
Bude gave the necessary orders. His captain stepped up to him and saluted.
‘Do you know what these red fire-flies were that come aboard, sir?’ he asked.
‘Fire-flies? Oh, musæ volitantes sonoræ, a common phenomenon in these latitudes,’ answered Bude.
Logan rejoiced to see that the earl was himself again.
‘The other gentlemen’s scientific beasts don’t seem to like them, sir?’
‘So Captain Funkal seems to imply,’ said Bude, and, taking the ropes, with Logan beside him, while the Pendragon lay to, he steered the boat towards the George Washington.
The captain welcomed them on deck in a scene of unusual character. He himself had a revolver in one hand, and a belaying pin in the other; he had been quelling, by the tranquillising methods of Captain Kettle, a mutiny caused by the terror of the crew. The sailors had attempted to leap overboard in the alarm caused by the invasion of the Berbalangs.
‘You will excuse my friend and myself for not being in evening dress, during a visit at this hour,’ said Bude in the silkiest of tones.
‘Glad to see you shipshape, gentlemen,’ answered the American mariner. ‘My dudes of professors were prancing round in Tuxedos and Prince Alberts when the darned fire-flies came aboard.’
Bude bowed. Study of Miss McCabe had taught him that Tuxedos and Prince Alberts mean evening dress and frock-coats.
‘Did your men have fits?’ asked the captain.
‘My captain, Captain Hardy, made a scientific inquiry about the – insects,’ said Bude. ‘The crew showed no emotion.’
‘I guess our fire-bugs were more on business than yours,’ said Captain Funkal; ‘they’ve wrecked the exhibits, and killed the darkeys with fright: except two, and they were exhibits themselves. Will you honour me by stepping into my cabin, gentlemen. I am glad to see sane white men to-night.’
Bude and Logan followed him through a scene of melancholy interest. Beside the mast, within a shattered palisade, lay huddled the vast corpse of the Mylodon of Patagonia, couchant amidst his fodder of chopped hay. The expression of the huge animal was placid and urbane in death. He was the victim of the ceaseless curiosity of science. Two of the five-horned antelope giraffes of Central Africa lay in a confused heap of horns and hoofs. Beside an immense tank couched a figure in evening dress, swearing in a subdued tone. Logan recognised Professor Potter. He gently laid his hand on the Professor’s shoulder. The Scottish savant looked up:
‘It is a dommed mismanaged affair,’ he said. ‘I could have brought the poor beast safe enough from the Clyde to New York, but the Americans made me harl him round by yon island of camstairy deevils,’ and he shook his fist in the direction of Cagayan Sulu.
‘What had you got?’ asked Logan.
‘The Beathach na Loch na bheiste,’ said Potter. ‘I drained the Loch to get him. Fortunately,’ he added, ‘it was at the expense of the Trust.’
After a few words of commonplace but heartfelt condolence, Logan descended the companion, and followed Bude and Captain Funkal into the cabin of that officer. The captain placed refreshments on the table.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you have seen the least riled of my professors, and you can guess what the rest are like. Professor Rustler is weeping in his cabin over a shrivelled old mummy. “Never will he speak again,” says he, and I am bound to say that I hev heard the critter discourse once. The mummy let some awful yells out of him when the fire-bugs came aboard.’
‘Yes, we heard a human cry,’ said Bude.
‘I had thought the talk was managed with a concealed gramophone,’ said the captain, ‘but it wasn’t. The Bunyip from Central Australia has gone to his long home. That was Professor Wilkinson’s pet. There is nothing left alive out of the lot but the natives that Professor Jenkins of England brought in irons from Cagayan Sulu. I reckon them two niggers are somehow at the bottom of the whole ruction.’
‘Indeed, and why?’ asked Bude.
‘Why, sir – I am addressing Professor Jones Harvey?’
Bude bowed. ‘Harvey, captain, but not professor – simple amateur seaman and explorer.’
‘Sir, your hand,’ said the captain. ‘Your friend is not a professor?’
‘Not I,’ said Logan, smiling.
The captain solemnly shook hands. ‘Gentlemen, you have sand,’ he said, a supreme tribute of respect. ‘Well, about these two natives. I never liked taking them aboard. They are, in consequence of the triumph of our arms, American subjects, natives of the conquered Philippines. I am no lawyer, and they may be citizens, they may have votes. They are entitled, anyway, to the protection of the Flag, and I would have entered them as steerage passengers. But that Professor Jenkins (and the other professors agreed) would have it that they came under the head of scientific exhibits. And they did allow that the critters were highly dangerous. I guess they were right.’
‘Why, what could they do?’
‘Well, gentlemen, I heard stories on shore that I took no stock in. I am not a superstitious man, but they allowed that these darkeys are not of a common tribe, but what the papers call “highly developed mediums.” And I guess they are at the bottom of the stramash.’
‘Captain Funkal, may I be frank with you?’ asked Bude.
‘I am hearing you,’ said the captain.
‘Then, to put it shortly, I have been at Cagayan Sulu before, on an exploring cruise. That was in 1897. I never wanted to go back to it. Logan, did I not regret the choice of that port when the news reached us in New Zealand?’
Logan nodded. ‘You funked it,’ he said.
‘When I was at Cagayan Sulu in 1897 I heard from the natives of a singular tribe in the centre of the island. This tribe is the Berbalangs.’
‘That’s what Professor Jenkins called them,’ said the captain.
‘The Berbalangs are subject to neither of the chiefs in the island. No native will approach their village. They are cannibals. The story is that they can throw themselves into a kind of trance. They then project a something or other – spirit, astral body, influence of some kind – which flies forth, making a loud noise when distant.’
‘That’s what we heard,’ said the captain.
‘But is silent when they are close at hand.’
‘Silent they were,’ said the captain.
‘They then appear as points of red flame.’
‘That’s so,’ interrupted the captain.
‘And cause death to man and beast, apparently by terror. I have seen,’ said Bude, shuddering, ‘the face of a dead native of high respectability, into whose house, before my own eyes, these points of flame had entered. I had to force the door, it was strongly barred within. I never mentioned the fact before, knowing that I could not expect belief.’
‘Well, sir, I believe you. You are a white man.’
Bude bowed, and went on. ‘The circumstances, though not generally known, have been published, captain, by a gentleman of reputation, Mr. Edward Forbes Skertchley, of Hong Kong. His paper indeed, in the Journal of a learned association, the Asiatic Society of Bengal,1 induced me, most unfortunately, to visit Cagayan Sulu, when it was still nominally in the possession of the Spaniards. My experience was similar to that of Mr. Skertchley, but, for personal reasons, was much more awful and distressing. One of the most beautiful of the island girls, a person of most amiable and winning character, not, alas! of my own faith’ – Bude’s voice broke – ‘was one of the victims of the Berbalangs… I loved her.’
He paused, and covered his face with his hands. The others respected and shared his emotion. The captain, like all sailors, sympathetic, dashed away a tear.
‘One thing I ought to add,’ said Bude, recovering himself, ‘I am no more superstitious than you are, Captain Funkal, and doubtless science will find a simple, satisfactory, and normal explanation of the facts, the existence of which we are both compelled to admit. I have heard of no well authenticated instance in which the force, whatever it is, has been fatal to Europeans. The superstitious natives, much as they dread the Berbalangs, believe that they will not attack a person who wears a cocoa-nut pearl. Why this should be so, if so it is, I cannot guess. But, as it is always well to be on the safe side, I provided myself five years ago with a collection of these objects, and when I heard that we were ordered to Cagayan Sulu I distributed them among my crew. My friend, you may observe, wears one of the pearls. I have several about my person.’ He disengaged a pin from his necktie, a muddy pearl set with burning rubies. ‘Perhaps, Captain Funkal, you will honour me by accepting this specimen, and wearing it while we are in these latitudes? If it does no good, it can do no harm. We, at least, have not been molested, though we witnessed the phenomena.’
‘Sir,’ said the captain, ‘I appreciate your kindness, and I value your gift as a memorial of one of the most singular experiences in a seafaring life. I drink your health and your friend’s. Mr. Logan, to you.’ The captain pledged his guests.
‘And now, gentlemen, what am I to do?’
‘That, captain, is for your own consideration.’
‘I’ll carpet that lubber, Jenkins,’ said the captain, and leaving the cabin, he returned with the Fellow of All Souls. His shirt front was ruffled, his white neckcloth awry, his pallid countenance betrayed a sensitive second-rate mind, not at unity with itself. He nodded sullenly to Logan: Bude he did not know.
‘Professor Jenkins, Mr. Jones Harvey,’ said the captain. ‘Sit down, sir. Take a drink; you seem to need one.’ Jenkins drained the tumbler, and sat with downcast eyes, his finger drumming nervously on the table.
‘Professor Jenkins, sir, I reckon you are the cause of the unparalleled disaster to this exploring expedition. Why did you bring these two natives of our territory on board, you well and duly knowing that the end would not justify the proceedings?’ A furtive glance from Jenkins lighted on the diamonds that sparkled in Logan’s ring. He caught Logan’s hand.
‘Traitor!’ he cried. ‘What will not scientific jealousy dare, that meanest of the passions!’
‘What the devil do you mean?’ said Logan angrily, wrenching his hand away.
‘You leave Mr. Logan alone, sir,’ said the captain. ‘I have two minds to put you in irons, Mr. Professor Jenkins. If you please, explain yourself.’
‘I denounce this man and his companion,’ said Jenkins, noticing a pearl ring on Bude’s finger; ‘I denounce them of conspiracy, mean conspiracy, against this expedition, and against the American flag.’
‘As how?’ inquired the captain, lighting a cigar with irritating calmness.
‘They wear these pearls, in which I had trusted for absolute security against the Berbalangs.’
‘Well, I wear one too,’ said the captain, pointing to the pin in his necktie. ‘Are you going to tell me that I am a traitor to the flag, sir? I warn you Professor, to be careful.’
‘What am I to think?’ asked Jenkins.
‘It is rather more important what you say,’ replied the captain. ‘What is this fine conspiracy?’
‘I had read in England about the Berbalangs.’
‘Probably in Mr. Skertchley’s curious paper in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal?’ asked Bude with suavity.
Jenkins merely stared at him.
‘I deemed that specimens of these American subjects, dowered with their strange and baneful gift, were well worthy of the study of American savants; and I knew that the pearls were a certain prophylactic.’
‘What’s that?’ asked the captain.
‘A kind of Universal Pain-Killer,’ said Jenkins.
‘Well, you surprise me,’ said the captain, ‘a man of your education. Pain-Killer!’ and he expectorated dexterously.
‘I mean that the pearls keep off the Berbalangs,’ said Jenkins.
‘Then why didn’t you lay in a stock of the pearls?’ asked the captain.
‘Because these conspirators had been before me. These men, or their agents, had bought up, just before our arrival, every pearl in the island. They had wormed out my secret, knew the object of my adventure, knew how to ruin us all, and I denounce them.’
‘A corner in pearls. Well, it was darned ’cute,’ said the captain impartially. ‘Now, Mr. Jones Harvey, and Mr. Logan, sir, what have you to say?’
‘Did Mr. Jenkins – I think you said that this gentleman’s name is Jenkins? – see the agent engaged in making this corner in pearls, or learn his name?’ asked Bude.
‘He was an Irish American, one McCarthy,’ answered Jenkins sullenly.
‘I am unacquainted with the gentleman,’ said Bude, ‘and I never employed any one for any such purpose. My visit to Cagayan Sulu was some years ago, just after that of Mr. Skertchley. Captain Funkal, I have already acquainted you with the facts, and you were kind enough to say that you accepted my statement.’
‘I did, sir, and I do,’ answered the captain. ‘As for you,’ he went on, ‘Mr. Professor Jenkins, when you found that your game was dangerous, indeed likely to be ruinous, to this scientific expedition, and to the crew of the George Washington– damn you, sir – you should have dropped it. I don’t know that I ever swore at a passenger before, and I beg your pardon, you two English gentlemen, for so far forgetting myself. I don’t know, and these gentlemen don’t know, who made the corner, but I don’t think our citizens want either you or your exhibits. The whole population of the States, sir, not to mention the live stock, cannot afford to go about wearing cocoa-nut pearls, a precaution which would be necessary if I landed these venomous Berbalangs of yours on our shores: man and wife too, likely to have a family of young Berbalangs. Snakes are not a patch on these darkeys, and our coloured population, at least, would be busted up.’
The captain paused, perhaps attracted by the chance of thus solving the negro problem.
‘So, I’ll tell you what it is, gentlemen; and, Professor Jenkins, I’ll turn back and land these two native exhibits, and I’ll put you on shore, Professor Jenkins, at Cagayan Sulu. Perhaps before a steamer touches there – which is not once in a blue moon – you’ll have had time to write an exhaustive monograph on the Berbalangs, their manners and customs.’
Jenkins (who knew what awaited him) threw himself on the floor at the feet of Captain Funkal. Horrified by the abject distress of one who, after all, was their countryman, Bude and Logan induced the captain to seclude Jenkins in his cabin. They then, by their combined entreaties, prevailed on the officer to land the Berbalangs on their own island, indeed, but to drop Jenkins later on civilised shores. Dawn saw the George Washington and the Pendragon in the port of Cagayan Sulu, where the fetters of the two natives, ill looking people enough, were knocked off, and they themselves deposited on the quay, where, not being popular, they were received by a hostile demonstration. The two vessels then resumed their eastward course. The taxidermic appliances without which Jones Harvey never sailed, and the services of his staff of taxidermists, were placed at the disposal of his brother savants. By this means a stuffed Mylodon, a stuffed Beathach, stuffed five-horned antelopes and a stuffed Bunyip, with a common gorilla and the Toltec mummy, now forever silent, were passed through the New York Custom House, and consigned to the McCabe Museum of Natural Varieties.
The immense case that contained the discovery of Jones Harvey was also carefully conveyed to an apartment prepared for it in the same repository. The competitors sought their hotels, Te-iki-pa marching beside Logan and Jones Harvey. But, by special arrangement, either Jones Harvey or his Maori ally always slept beside their mysterious case, which they watched with passionate attention. Two or three days were spent in setting up the stuffed exhibits. Then the trustees, through The Yellow Flag (the paper founded by the late Mr. McCabe), announced to the startled citizens the nature of the competition. On successive days the vast theatre of the McCabe Museum would be open, and each competitor, in turn, would display to the public his contribution, and lecture on his adventures and on the variety of nature which he had secured.
While the death of the animals was deplored, nothing was said, for obvious reasons, about the causes of the catastrophe.
The general excitement was intense. Interviewers scoured the city, and flocked, to little purpose, around the officials of the McCabe Museum. Special trains were run from all quarters. The hotels were thronged. ‘America,’ it was announced, ‘had taken hold of science, and was just going to make science hum.’
On the first day of the exhibition, Dr. Hiram Dodge displayed the stuffed Mylodon. The agitation was unprecedented. America had bred, in ancient days, and an American citizen had discovered, the monstrous yet amiable animal whence prehistoric Patagonia drew her milk supplies and cheese stuffs. Mr. Dodge’s adventures, he modestly said, could only be adequately narrated by Mr. Rider Haggard. Unluckily the Mylodon had not survived the conditions of the voyage, the change of climates. The applause was thunderous. Mr. Dodge gracefully expressed his obligations to his fair and friendly rival, Mr. Jones Harvey, who had loaned his taxidermic appliances. It did not appear to the public that the Mylodon could be excelled in interest. The Toltec mummy, as he could no longer talk, was flat on a falling market, nor was Mr. Rustler’s narrative of its conversational powers accepted by the scepticism of the populace, though it was corroborated by Captain Funkal, Professor Dodge, and Professor Wilkinson, who swore affidavits before a notary, within the hearing of the multitude. The Beathach, exhibited by Professor Potter, was reckoned of high anatomical interest by scientific characters, but it was not of American habitat, and left the people relatively cold. On the other hand, all the Macleans and Macdonnells of Canada and Nova Scotia wept tears of joy at the corroboration of their tribal legends, and the popularity of Professor Potter rivalled even that of Mr. Ian Maclaren. He was at once engaged by Major Pond for a series of lectures. The adventures of Howard Fry, in the taking of his gorilla, were reckoned interesting, as were those of the captor of the Bunyip, but both animals were now undeniably dead. The people could not feed them with waffles and hominy cakes in the gardens of the institute. The savants wrangled on the anatomical differences and resemblances of the Bunyip and the Beathach; still the critters were, to the general mind, only stuffed specimens, though unique. The African five-horned brutes (though in quieter times they would have scored a triumph) did not now appeal to the heart of the people.
At last came the day when, in the huge crowded amphitheatre, with Te-iki-pa by his side, Jones Harvey addressed the congregation. First he exhibited a skeleton of a dinornis, a bird of about twenty-five feet in height.
‘Now,’ he went on, ‘thanks to the assistance of a Maori gentleman, my friend the Tohunga Te-iki-pa’ – (cheers, Te-iki bows his acknowledgments) – ‘I propose to exhibit to you this.’
With a touch on the mechanism he unrolled the valves of a gigantic incubator. Within, recumbent on cotton wool, the almost frenzied spectators perceived two monstrous eggs, like those of the Roc of Arabian fable. Te-iki-pa now chanted a brief psalm in his own language. One of the eggs rolled gently in its place; then the other. A faint crackling noise was heard, first from one, then from the other egg. From each emerged the featherless head of a fowl – the species hitherto unknown to the American continent. The necks pushed forth, then the shoulders, then both shells rolled away in fragments, and the spectators gazed on two fledgling Moas. Te-iki-pa, on inspection, pronounced them to be cock and hen, and in healthy condition. The breed, he said, could doubtless be acclimatised.
The professors of the museum, by Jones Harvey’s request, then closely examined the chickens. There could be no doubt of it, they unanimously asserted: these specimens were living deinornithe (which for scientific men, is not a bad shot at the dual of deinornis). The American continent was now endowed, through the enterprise of Mr. Jones Harvey, not only with living specimens, but with a probable breed of a species hitherto thought extinct.
The cheering was led by Captain Funkal, who waved the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack. Words cannot do justice to the scene. Women fainted, strong men wept, enemies embraced each other. For details we must refer to the files of The Yellow Flag. A plébiscite to select the winner of the McCabe Prize was organised by that Journal. The Moas (bred and exhibited by Mr, Jones Harvey) simply romped in, by 1,732,901 votes, the Mylodon being a bad second, thanks to the Irish vote.
Bude telegraphed ‘Victory,’ and Miss McCabe by cable answered ‘Bully for us.’
The secret of these lovers was well kept. None who watches the fascinating Countess of Bude as she moves through the gilded saloons of Mayfair guesses that her hand was once the prize of success in a scientific exploration. The identity of Jones Harvey remains a puzzle to the learned. For the rest, a letter in which Jenkins told the story of the Berbalangs was rejected by the Editor of Nature, and has not yet passed even the Literary Committee of the Society for Psychical Research. The classical authority on the Berbalangs is still the paper by Mr. Skertchley in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.2 The scientific gentlemen who witnessed the onslaught of the Berbalangs have convinced themselves (except Jenkins) that nothing of the sort occurred in their experience. The evidence of Captain Funkal is rejected as ‘marine.’
Te-iki-pa decided to remain in New York as custodian of the Moas. He occasionally obliges by exhibiting a few feats of native conjuring, when his performances are attended by the élite of the city. He knows that his countrymen hold him in feud, but he is aware that they fear even more than they hate the ex-medicine man of his Maori Majesty.
The generosity of Bude and his Countess heaped rewards on Merton, who vainly protested that his services had not been professional.
The frequent appearance of new American novelists, whose works sell 250,000 copies in their first month, demonstrate that Mr. McCabe’s scheme for raising the level of genius has been as satisfactory as it was original. Genius is riz.
But who ‘cornered’ the muddy pearls in Cagayan Sulu?
That secret is only known to Lady Bude, her confessor, and the Irish-American agent whom she employed. For she, as we saw, had got at the nature of poor Jenkins’s project and had acquainted herself with the wonderful properties of the pearls, which she cornered.
As a patriot, she consoles herself for the loss of the other exhibits to her country, by the reflection that Berbalangs would have been the most mischievous of pauper immigrants. But of all this Bude knows nothing.
