by Don Wilcox
Now we began to feel the impact of his rough stuff in earnest, and it was no joke. I called to Shrinky to get herself back in the corner while I stood him off. She did it. I could hear her shouting at me, “Fight ’im, ’Spando. Hold your own. Don’t get any smaller. Keep him back.”
While I fought I had to be careful not to grit my teeth. I didn’t want to get any smaller and lose what little advantage I had left. All I wanted was to let that audience of ants know that their heroic little Tuffy had told the truth, and that he did deserve the honors of the queen and her band.
But with sickening heart I suddenly realized that Shrinky’s voice was growing smaller and smaller. She must be still gritting her teeth, the way she always tended to do when I was in danger.
“Not too small, Shrinky,” I cried.
I didn’t hear an answer. All I heard was the curious little clucks of amazement from these ant. onlookers. With their own eyes they were seeing their hero deflate me. They saw him bring me down from giant size, apparently by sheer fighting nerve. What a hero that would make him!
Yes, I was playing god by giving in to him. And yet—ironically—what a false impression my miracle would give the younger generations of heroes, who would, in turn, try to conquer beasts a hundred times their size! No, this wouldn’t happen again. Tuffy would become a legend.
I’ll never know what might have happened. I had had my share of scrapping. I was taking too much punishment—more than any god to insects should be forced to take. So I tightened by fists and began to expand, calling to Shrinky.
With the suddenness of an explosion it happened. The whole top of the ant hill blew off!
I rolled like a marble, just in time to escape being drawn up into the snuffing trunk of a hellova big elephant!
As quick as you could snap your fingers I had ceased fighting an ant and was fighting an elephant. And I was ill prepared for the change.
It was Shrinky’s disappearance that made the whole ordeal so terrifying. I shouted my lungs out for her. The ants were chasing around in mad thousands, trying to get under cover. The gentle old pachyderm was sniffing at them, and he spotted me as something larger and stranger than the little creatures he was disturbing.
I ran out of his path. He plodded along and stepped squarely upon the ruins of the ant hill.
“Shrinky! Shrinky!” Why had I ever allowed her to come down to this world of little beasts? How would I ever find her little crushed body in these ruins? And she had come here to play god, to be the sympathetic goddess of justice!
All her happy thoughts had gone astray. One step, one snort from a ruthless god many times her size had shattered all our good intentions.
Amid these ponderings I found myself clinging to the elephant’s trunk, climbing to its ear, holding onto the short hairs to keep from falling. With my free hand I was beating it, trying to drive it away from the ant hill. My fists were clenched, I was throwing larger, larger, larger.
Then, before I could slip back to the ground and elude the human eyes that caught me from the zoo promenade, the officers of the law took possession of me. What did I mean by getting into that pen with the elephants? Trespassing of this sort was something for the courts to deal with.
I rode away in a paddy wagon, and they tell me I fought all the way, and that I raved like a mad man, and that f kept calling for Shrinky.
In the cell I calmed down. I would slip out, as soon as all was quiet. I would go back. I would search that scene of ruin and desolation. I had remembered seeing one of the ants crushed among the stones. If Shrinky could be found—
I shook the dirt from my clothes. I washed my dusty hands and face. I started to pace the cell floor. My shoes were full of dirt. A pebble was sticking my foot. I removed the shoe—And the pebble was Shrinky! Her clothes were bedraggled, but her face was smiling up at me triumphantly. Her tiny voice was the warmest greeting I ever expect to hear from such dainty little lips.
“ ’Spando! I thought I would suffocate before you’d let me out. Can’t you tell when your foot hurts. I struck you, and scratched, and even bit!”
“And all the time I couldn’t feel it because I was thinking of you!” Then we were both laughing.
I reduced myself, and together we crawled through the bars and walked out past the sleeping guard. Then we restored ourselves to size and wended our way slowly back to the zoo and looked down at what had once been an industrious ant colony.
“We tried to be just and fair, didn’t we?” Shrinky was a bit disconsolate.
“Shrinky, I’m afraid I stepped on one of those ants. See, by that stone. It happened when the elephant was crowding me—”
“Yes, Expando. I saw it happen, just before I jumped into your shoe.”
“Was it—was it any of the ants we knew?”
Shrinky glanced up at me and turned her eyes away without answering.
“I’ll hope,” I said, “that the gods of luck guided me when I took that step. I hope it was one of those arrogant prime ministers. Some of those trouble makers deserved to die.”
“I know who it was,” she said, and her voice was almost reverent. It’s curious, what funny little sentiments will get a grip on a person who has the gift of being able to grow large or small.
“Was it the queen? One of the twelve big shots? Was it Tuffy?”
“I’ll never tell,” said Shrinky, and she never has.
THE SECRET OF SUTTER’S LAKE
First published in Amazing Stories, January 1947
Deep within Sutter’s Lake was a mystery that had to be solved; or Walter Sutter would die . . .
CHAPTER I
When a fellow gets into a double tangle with a shark and an octopus, all within his last five minutes of swimming for a bit of island, I’m here to tell the world he’s lucky if he still has lungs to gasp with.
The stars have to be on his side if he ever sets foot on terra firma. I’ll guarantee the “terra” will stay with him a month, but if by that time he’s feeling “firma”—with no damages except a freak arm—it’s a sure sign he’s been Irving right, praying right, and cussing right.
It was the good fortune of Yours Truly, Walter Sutter, during this double diabolical water-battle to be armed with a chef’s butcher knife. Otherwise I’d never have lived to contemplate the joys of relating this strange adventure to contemplated grandchildren.
The chefs butcher-knife was the one object I’d been able to grab when, some watery hours previously, Jap bullets had perforated our rubber raft and my comrades had gone down—but we’ll skip that very unpleasant chapter, for my story properly begins when I reached the island.
Not that what I have to tell will be pleasant. It won’t be, I give you warning.
When I was almost ashore, this surprise attack from the white-bellied death caught me—caught me so fatigued from the long swim and so engrossed in the race between my flagging energies and the remaining stretch of water that the response from my knife hand was much too slow. The beast got my left arm. He snapped it off clean above the elbow.
As he darted on, my blade cut a thin dark red line in his phantom whiteness. Then he was gone, and I was fighting on with an arm and a half—and a knife—and a pair of kicking legs that were presently weighted down by entangling ropes.
The ropes were tentacles, studded with suction cups. I was already in a panic. The knowledge that I would bleed to death in a matter of minutes was propelling me with all possible speed into the rocky shallows of the island.
But here was this damned devilfish bent on hitching a ride and being very impolite about it.
I lashed out savage blows with my knife hand—my only hand!—my mind as well as my body went berserk. Strange that wild flashes of memories should leap into my head. But one’s last moments, they say, are like that.
I was remembering something in Marcia’s letters—her repeated warnings that she would never be able to endure it if I were lost in the Pacific—that she lived only for the wedding bells that would r
ing when I returned—that if I were ever wounded or lost at sea, she herself would come to my rescue.
To all of which I had written back a sarcastic oh-yeah. Just imagine her putting to sea in her father’s oceangoing yacht and steaming into torpedo-streaked waters to look for me! Damn foolishness. She’d better sit tight in her cozy little twenty-thousand-dollar breakfast nook and read the funnies. As for me, if anything happened, let it happen. In time she’d find another boyfriend who could ice-skate and bowl and play tennis; probably with something less than my finesse, to be sure, but he’d learn to take my place in time.
I had gone so far as to imagine this mythical rival sitting in Marcia’s darkened living room, holding her hand, while her father showed his favorite movies of their European travels and retold his yarns about that handsome young German officer who actually thought Marcia was going to fall in love with him.
Flash—flash—flash! The crests of one’s thoughts fly past like sparks of light—and here I was, fighting my way to shore, with my severed arm burning like a torch, and this damned octopus dragging me down, opening his jaws—
Swish! I did it. I struck the nerve between his eye—a little knot of nerves the size of a pea—and at once his arms fell limp. Paralyzed, he dropped by the wayside.
I dragged myself ashore, now in a panic for fear I’d already lost too much blood to be able to tend my wound.
I was vaguely aware that one of the slimy gray tentacles which I had severed from the body of the octopus was still clinging limply about my waist.
Consider what you would have done under the circumstances. This four-foot length of octopus arm had been sliced off by my knife. Its mucilaginous end was about the same diameter as my own luckless left arm.
I did what seemed the natural thing to do. I pressed the end of the octopus arm tight against the end of my half arm. At once the bleeding subsided.
With strips of clothing I succeeded in binding the octopus tentacle in place. A very crude job it was, performed as I fought off spells of fainting . . .
I remember that I was lying on the sand within a few feet of the slapping waters as sleep engulfed me. The afternoon sun was sinking. I had the sensation of sinking with it, and I wondered if I would ever awaken . . .
CHAPTER II
Walter Sutter’s Island
Many days later I knew that I would live—and deep within my heart I felt grateful to the powers of Nature that had come to my rescue.
A sort of Robinson Crusoe existence had been my lot from my first awakening, and there was a novelty and an interest about it that I didn’t mind. Hour by hour I reassured myself that a Navy rescue party would pick me up in a day or two.
In the meantime, crippling along with the utmost of care so as not to disturb my healing arm, I made a few excursions around the island.
It was shaped like a cone, naturally enough, for that was exactly what it was—the top of an undersea volcanic mountain. Islands of this sort, I realized, continually came and went in the Pacific. My first happy thought was that I was the discoverer and the only human inhabitant.
But I was all wrong on this theory. Japanese fishermen had already taken the spot over—maybe ten years or more—earlier. Three little Japanese huts with curved roofs stood in the edge of the wooded north slope of the volcanic cone. They were primitive in construction, not built to offer much comfort from a storm. But they were far enough above the shore line that the highest waves of those first weeks couldn’t reach them.
I was tempted to make one of them my temporary home. However, the nights were warm; sleeping under the stars was good; the whole island was mine. I decided not to confine myself within the walls of any Jap-built shack.
Besides, was there not a chance that Japanese fishermen might return on some dark night?
There was plain evidence in one of the little houses—the largest and best constructed of the three—that a bit of modern Japan had invaded these fishermen’s quarters not many months ago.
New bright metal—with a military gleam, I thought, though this was only a guess. It was, to all appearances, a new steel door that must have led to another room—or perhaps a cave.
From the outside nothing of this hidden room could be seen, for the upward slope of the mountainside obscured the rear wall of the hut.
From the inside this door in the rear wall was certainly the most conspicuous thing in the house; and the most tantalizing thing about the door was the big, fat padlock that kept me from looking in.
I sauntered out into the thickets and gathered some ripe berries and asked myself some over-ripe questions.
If Japanese fishermen had turned this island over to the Japanese military machine, what had happened to said military machine?
If the Jap army had started to stock this place with supplies, why hadn’t they left some soldiers on guard?
If that steel door with the padlock was all that stood between me and some secrets cached in the mountainside, how soon could I break through?
If this island contained anything whatsoever of value, why shouldn’t I proceed to claim the island in the name of the Allied Nations and appropriate its treasures to the support of its standing army whose name was Walter Sutter?
I found a can half-filled with red lacquer among the abandoned junk in the steel-door hut and proceeded to make everything legal.
“Sutter’s Island” was the first sign I painted, and I set it up with stones on the shore below the three huts.
Toward the east end where the two arms of the pear-shaped island curved around in horseshoe style, I posted a three-foot billboard, “Sutter’s Bay.”
Later I took a fancy to a spot up in the middle of the horseshoe where a cliff of solidified lava in various fantastic shapes overhung the water. There was a lava camel with three humps and a head turned backward. Camel Point, I called it, and it became a lookout post for me. So I put another sign up there to keep me company.
“Sutter’s Lake”—it said—and believe it or not, what it referred to was that cozy little patch of blue that spread as far as the eye could see, otherwise known as the Pacific Ocean. Later, ironically, it was to have another meaning—but I couldn’t foresee that.
The octopus arm was still with me through all these comings and goings. I felt a genuine affection for it, naturally enough, for it had unquestionably saved my life.
It was somewhat cumbersome to carry around, its four-foot length being added to the length of my upper arm. However, for some time I had employed the convenient device of a strap from my neck and shoulder, upon which its weight depended. Thus the wound was being allowed to heal with as little strain and disturbance as possible.
As the healing went on I was troubled to find that the octopus arm showed no signs of dropping off. It clung as if it belonged.
I tried to ignore the prolonged attachment of this foreign body. I felt certain that with time and healing I could lose it without resorting to the Chef’s butcher-knife.
But one day as I was running into the thickets on the north slope to avoid being seen by some passing Zeros, a very strange thing happened.
It happened when the supporting strap from my shoulder broke. The weight of the octopus arm didn’t fall. Instead, the thing wrapped itself comfortably over my shoulder and clung.
Then I knew. In this action it had responded to my will. A series of nerves had found their way into it from my upper arm during the weeks of healing. Every inch of that curving tentacle was a part of my arm now.
CHAPTER III
Bombs and Biscuits
Hours at a time I would lie in the sand at the shore’s edge and allow my left arm to wave languidly in the cool waters.
My bare toes dug idly into the sand. The leather belt of my ragged trousers pressed lightly at my hips. In my hand a canteen of fresh water—I required both kinds now, salt and fresh. The left arm was not at home in the fresh water from the spring.
It was a very lazy, easy life, and if I could avoid thinking, it was no
t painful. But when I would brood over what had happened, I would find myself quietly going mad.
The smell of the sultry sea became a part of me. New nerves for old. New thoughts for old. New conceptions of the vastness of time and space, and the immensity of a world of emptiness.
Meanwhile, strange things were happening to me.
This left arm with its suction cups was sharpening my sense of touch, of knowing things from the feel of things. I began to exercise an instinctive play toward small shells and sea life that would be tempting to an octopus. I fried and ate these, and my taste for them increased.
I watched with interest the growing responsiveness of this arm to my own will. I could make it bend about; I could make it seize things. I could force it to retreat (though it did so reluctantly) from the water. Dry sand was somewhat painful and repulsive to its touch.
The days were long, and no rescue ship came. Jap planes rarely passed overhead.
The nights were full of troubled sleep. I would wake to the roar of the waves and the wind, struck by some crazy fancy that I was hearing the music floating across from some distant shore. Sometimes it was a long forgotten symphony. Sometimes it was the once familiar boogie band at Henry’s Tavern.
On calm nights when everything was thick with a black fog, there would be voices chanting, laughing, talking. Was this a form of desert madness?
Vividly bits of far-away conversations would come back to me. I would recognize them as conversations I had once participated in. Mystical groups of old friends rehearsed the lines they had spoken years ago.
Marcia’s father would repeat his same funny stories as he discussed the movies he had taken in pre-war Europe. He would lift a comical eyebrow at her as he alluded to one Adolf Kuntz, the young Nazi who had tried to fall in love with her.
And Marcia, bless her heart, would say, “Don’t worry, father. Walter will never let any Nazi get me.” And she would pat my uniformed shoulder proudly.
