Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911

by Sam Moskowitz (ed. )

  “Till I burst, sir,” replied the torpedo lieutenant respectfully, but with a smile.

  “I believe you,” said the Captain admiringly. “But can it be done?”

  “It can, sir,” answered Harden.

  “Good! How have you placed it? Remember, all our eggs are in one basket.”

  The lieutenant explained what he had done.

  “Good,” repeated the Captain. “Now, let us thoroughly understand your plan: you wait and watch, and, when the time comes, press your own button. If that fails, you warn us, and we let go instantly. If that isn’t a success—well—now go and sleep. I’ll have you called at sunset.”

  Harden withdrew to his cabin, but excitement banished sleep. The hours passed slowly; but at last the sun set, and the torpedo lieutenant again went over the side in his diving suit. This time he was alone.

  “Don’t forget,” said the Captain, “to send a message often—then we shall know you’re all right.”

  It was a period of great tension as soon as darkness came on. There was no moon, but the air was clear, and the stars shone brightly, suggesting the dim outline of the rocky shore. Not a light was showing on the Samson. She lay, a huge, dark mass of steel, on the water. At all her shotted machine and quick-firing guns the crews were standing; the engineers stood to their levers, and at each search-light were men ready to throw the intense beams through the darkness.

  On the sea-bed the torpedo lieutenant was not less ready. His engine of destruction was placed to cover the narrow channel. The Samson’s search-lights were to be turned on as soon as he signaled that he was ready for them, when their powerful rays would flood the surface, outlining the enemy.

  Harden looked about him and above him. But there was no sign of a submarine. Darkness had only just set in.

  He made his signal, and was no longer in darkness. The sea was suffused with light—a dull, green glow, caused by the play of the battleship’s search-lights on the surface of the water.

  The air was clear as well as the water, the search-lights worked un-blinkingly, and Harden was sure that he would be able to detect any submarine that might approach. He could perceive the dim, shadowy hulk of the huge battleship—a long, broad, dark outline on the greenish glow.

  The torpedo lieutenant could now see tolerably clearly ahead and about him. He never let his eyes be drawn away from the narrow neck of the anchorage. They were aching with the strain upon them when he saw a shadowy cigar-shaped form coming very slowly toward him.

  At last!

  Almost instinctively he began gently to press the button of his mine, but he overcame the thrill of the excitement, and stayed his hand. He held his breath, too, for he saw that the growing outline was in very truth a submarine coming in a straight line for the Samson, and would be within sure striking distance of her in a few seconds. It was passing slowly overhead like some foul monster of the deep.

  Even as he looked Harden saw a long, narrow body leave the bow of the submarine. He gave a groan. “Too late!” he thought, as the torpedo passed overhead—doubly terrifying as seen in that appalling gloom. For a second or two it seemed as if his heart stood still. He waited a second or two longer; then, hearing no crash, he assumed that the torpedo had missed its mark and failed to act.

  Intense fear was followed by a paroxysm of fury. Harden jammed the button home.

  A dull roar as if the bottom of the universe had been blown out, a mountain-high geyser, a cloud of inky smoke as if a volcano had burst through the sea, and the air was filled with bent, twisted, gnarled fragments of the submarine destroyer. Far and wide splashed the wreckage, or crashed aboard the battleship. Then the seething, hissing waters subsided. Only a huge, inky spot where the mine had gouged through sand to mud, spread lazily within the silvery glare of the search-lights.

  “The life-line! The hose! The life-line!” cried a score of voices, and as many willing hands laid hold and hauled in the slack. Fathom after fathom lay coiled on the deck, then—hose and line dangled in air, torn in two.

  All that night small boats grappled. In vain were divers sent below. Torpedo-lieutenant Harden had given his life for his ship.

  MAN-EATING PLANTS

  Intimation that there is something unnatural about the trees in the Cuban jungle registers on this party, as they view the skeleton of a man, bones picked clean, held aloft by a network of green cords, in The Purple Terror by Fred M. White, The Strand Magazine, September 1898. Illustration is by Paul Hardy.

  The Strand Magazine

  September, 1899

  THE PURPLE TERROR

  by Fred M. White

  A WELL-EMPLOYED gambit of science fiction during the gaslight era was the possibility of man-eating plants. The patron saint of all man-eating plant stories was Frank Aubrey with his The Devil Tree of El Dorado (Hutchinson & Company, London, 1897), which went into numerous editions over a period of more than ten years. The Devil Tree of El Dorado was inspired by the elevated plateau in South America called Roraima. At the time of the book’s appearance, no one had ever ascended the two thousand-foot precipice leading to it, and in his introduction to the book Frank Aubrey made an impassioned plea for Great Britain to annex it as part of British Guiana before Venezuela, whose border it straddled, claimed it.

  Aubrey felt that plant and animal life might have remained unaltered for hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of years, on the Roraima plateau, and that scientific discoveries of incalculable worth conceivably could be found there.

  Time has been unkind to Frank Aubrey. Venezuela did annex the Roraima and no incredible scientific discoveries have been made on its surface, but Aubrey’s speculations, including the ancient man-eating plant worshiped and feared by the imaginary natives of that South American skyland, have been burned into the traditions of science fiction.

  Fred Merrick White, author of The Purple Terror, wrote science fiction frequently for Pearson’s Magazine, The Strand Magazine, and in later years, dozens of adventure pulps. His story is a man-eating-plant tale in the finest tradition, well handled, with good characterization and a few new ideas on the biology of such a plant. It is very probable that White was inspired by The Devil Tree of El Dorado, which had become a bestseller only a year previously, and was therefore early in exploiting an idea that has become an integral part of science fiction. So much so, in fact, that there also seems little doubt that the story that follows this one, Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant by Howard R. Garis, was intended to be a satire on the theme.

  Fred M. White was best known for his detective stories, both of short and novel length, and a number of them achieved hard covers, the most successful being The Sundial (B. W. Dodge, 1908). White also managed to get one fantasy novel into cloth, The White Battalions (Pearson, 1900).

  LIEUTENANT Will Scarlett’s instructions were devoid of problems, physical or otherwise. To convey a letter from Captain Driver of the Yankee Doodle, in Porto Rico Bay, to Admiral Lake on the other side of the isthmus, was an apparently simple matter.

  “All you have to do,” the captain remarked, “is to take three or four men with you in case of accidents, cross the isthmus on foot, and simply give this letter into the hands of Admiral Lake. By so doing we shall save at least four days, and the aborigines are presumedly friendly.”

  The aborigines aforesaid were Cuban insurgents. Little or no strife had taken place along the neck lying between Porto Rico and the north bay where Lake’s flagship lay, though the belt was known to be given over to the disaffected Cubans.

  “It is a matter of fifty miles through practically unexplored country,” Scarlett replied; “and there’s a good deal of the family quarrel in this business, sir. If the Spaniards hate us, the Cubans are not exactly enamoured of our flag.”

  Captain Driver roundly denounced the whole pack of them.

  “Treacherous thieves to a man,” he said. “I don’t suppose your progress will have any brass bands and floral arches to it. And they tell me the forest is pretty thick. But y
ou’ll get there all the same. There is the letter, and you can start as soon as you like.”

  “I may pick my own men, sir?”

  “My dear fellow, take whom you please. Take the mastiff, if you like.”

  “I’d like the mastiff,” Scarlett replied; “as he is practically my own, I thought you would not object.”

  Will Scarlett began to glow as the prospect of adventure stimulated his imagination. He was rather a good specimen of West Point naval dandyism. He had brains at the back of his smartness, and his geological and botanical knowledge were going to prove of considerable service to a grateful country when said grateful country should have passed beyond the rudimentary stages of colonization. And there was some disposition to envy Scarlett on the part of others floating for the past month on the liquid prison of the sapphire sea.

  A warrant ofliccr, Tarrer by name, plus two A.B.’s of thews and sinews, to say nothing of the dog, completed the exploring party. By the time that the sun kissed the tip of the feathery hills they had covered some six miles of their journey. From the first Scarlett had been struck by the absolute absence of the desolation and horror of civil strife. Evidently the fiery cross had not been carried here; huts and houses were intact; the villagers stood under sloping eaves, and regarded the Americans with a certain sullen curiosity.

  “We’d better stop for the night here,” said Scarlett.

  They had come at length to a village that boasted some pretensions. An adobe chapel at one end of the straggling street was faced by a wine-house at the other. A padre, with hands folded over a bulbous, greasy gabardine, bowed gravely to Scarlett’s salutation. The latter had what Tarrer called “considerable Spanish.”

  “We seek quarters for the night,” said Scarlett. “Of course, we are prepared to pay for them.”

  The sleepy padre nodded towards the wine-house.

  “You will find fair accommodations there,” he said. “We are friends of the Americanos.”

  Scarlett doubted the fact, and passed on with florid thanks. So far, little signs of friendliness had been encountered on the march. Coldness, suspicion, a suggestion of fear, but no friendliness to be embarrassing.

  The keeper of the wine-shop had his doubts. He feared his poor accommodation for guests so distinguished. A score or more of picturesque, cut-throat-looking rascals with cigarettes in their mouths lounged sullenly in the bar. The display of a brace of gold dollars enlarged mine host’s opinion of his household capacity.

  “I will do my best, señors,” he said. “Come this way.”

  So it came to pass that an hour after twilight Tarrer and Scarlett were seated in the open amongst the oleanders and the trailing gleam of the fire-flies, discussing cigars of average merit and a native wine that was not without virtues. The long bar of the wine-house was brilliantly illuminated; from within came shouts of laughter mingled with the ting, tang of the guitar and the rollicking clack of the castanets.

  “They seem to be happy in there,” Tarrer remarked. “It isn’t all daggers and ball in this distressful country.”

  A certain curiosity came over Scarlett.

  “It is the duty of a good officer,” he said, “to lose no opportunity of acquiring useful information. Let us join the giddy throng, Tarrer.”

  Tarrer expressed himself with enthusiasm in favour of any amusement that might be going. A month’s idleness on shipboard increases the appetite for that kind of thing wonderfully. The long bar was comfortable, and filled with Cubans who took absolutely no notice of the intruders. Their eyes were turned towards a rude stage at the far end of the bar, whereon a girl was gyrating in a dance with a celerity and grace that caused the wreath of flowers around her shoulders to resemble a trembling zone of purple flame.

  “A wonderfully pretty girl and a wonderfully pretty dance,” Scarlett murmured, when the motions ceased and the girl leapt gracefully to the ground. “Largesse, I expect. I thought so. Well, I’m good for a quarter.”

  The girl came forward, extending a shell prettily. She curtsied before Scarlett and fixed her dark, liquid eyes on his. As he smiled and dropped his quarter-dollar into the shell a coquettish gleam came into the velvety eyes. An ominous growl came from the lips of a bearded ruffian close by.

  “Othello’s jealous,” said Tarrer. “Look at his face.”

  “I am better employed,” Scarlett laughed. “That was a graceful dance, pretty one. I hope you are going to give us another one presently—”

  Scarlett paused suddenly. His eyes had fallen on the purple band of flowers the girl had twined round her shoulder. Scarlett was an enthusiastic botanist; he knew most of the gems in Flora’s crown, but he had never looked upon such a vivid wealth of blossom before.

  The flowers were orchids, and orchids of a kind unknown to collectors anywhere. On this point Scarlett felt certain. And yet this part of the world was by no means a difficult one to explore in comparison with New Guinea and Sumatra, where the rarer varieties had their homes.

  The blooms were immensely large, far larger than any flower of the kind known to Europe or America, of a deep pure purple, with a blood-red centre. As Scarlett gazed upon them he noticed a certain cruel expression on the flower. Most orchids have a kind of face of their own; the purple blooms had a positive expression of ferocity and cunning. They exhumed, too, a queer, sickly fragrance. Scarlett had smelt something like it before, after the Battle of Manila. The perfume was the perfume of a corpse.

  “And yet they are magnificent flowers,” said Scarlett. “Won’t you tell me where you got them from, pretty one?”

  The girl was evidently flattered by the attention bestowed upon her by the smart young American. The bearded Othello alluded to edged up to her side.

  “The señor had best leave the girl alone,” he said, insolently.

  Scarlett’s fist clenched as he measured the Cuban with his eyes. The Admiral’s letter crackled in his breast-pocket, and discretion got the best of valour.

  “You are paying yourself a poor compliment, my good fellow,” he said, “though I certainly admire your good taste. Those flowers interested me.”

  The man appeared to be mollified. His features corrugated in a smile.

  “The senor would like some of those blooms?” he asked. “It was I who procured them for little Zara here. I can show you where they grow.”

  Every eye in the room was turned in Scarlett’s direction. It seemed to him that a kind of diabolical malice glistened on every dark face there, save that of the girl, whose features paled under her healthy tan.

  “If the señor is wise,” she began, “he will not—

  “Listen to the tales of a silly girl,” Othello put in menacingly. He grasped the girl by the arm, and she winced in positive pain. “Pshaw, there is no harm where the flowers grow, if one is only careful. I will take you there, and I will be your guide to Port Anna, where you are going, for a gold dollar.”

  All Scarlett’s scientific enthusiasm was aroused. It is not given to every man to present a new orchid to the horticultural world. And this one would dwarf the finest plant hitherto discovered.

  “Done with you,” he said; “we start at daybreak. I shall look to you to be ready. Your name is Tito? Well, good-night, Tito.”

  As Scarlett and Tarrer withdrew the girl suddenly darted forward. A wild word or two fluttered from her lips. Then there was a sound as of a blow, followed by a little stifled cry of pain.

  “No, no,” Tarrer urged, as Scarlett half turned. “Better not. They are ten to one, and they are no friends of ours. It never pays to interfere in these family quarrels. I daresay, if you interfered, the girl would be just as ready to knife you as her jealous lover.”

  “But a blow like that, Tarrer!”

  “It’s a pity, but I don’t see how we can help it. Your business is the quick dispatch of the Admiral’s letter, not the squiring of dames.”

  Scarlett owned with a sigh that Tarrer was right.

  II

  It was quite a different T
ito who presented himself at daybreak the following morning. His insolent manner had disappeared. He was cheerful, alert, and he had a manner full of the most winning politeness.

  “You quite understand what we want,” Scarlett said. “My desire is to reach Port Anna as soon as possible. You know the way?”

  “Every inch of it, señor. I have made the journey scores of times. And I shall have the felicity of getting you there early on the third day from now.”

  “Is it so far as that?”

  “The distance is not great, senor. It is the passage through the woods. There are parts where no white man has been before.”

  “And you will not forget the purple orchids?”

  A queer gleam trembled like summer lightning in Tito’s eyes. The next instant it had gone. A time was to come when Scarlett was to recall that look, but for the moment it was allowed to pass.

  “The señor shall see the purple orchid,” he said; “thousands of them. They have a bad name amongst our people, but that is all nonsense. They grow in the high trees, and their blossoms cling to long, green tendrils. These tendrils are poisonous to the flesh, and great care should be taken in handling them. And the flowers are quite harmless, though we call them the devil’s poppies.”

  To all of this Scarlett listened eagerly. He was all-impatient to see and handle the mysterious flower for himself. The whole excursion was going to prove a wonderful piece of luck. At the same time he had to curb his impatience. There would be no chance of seeing the purple orchid to-day.

  For hours they fought their way along through the dense tangle. A heat seemed to lie over all the land like a curse—a blistering, sweltering, moist heat with no puff of wind to temper its breathlessness. By the time that the sun was sliding down, most of the party had had enough of it.

  They passed out of the underwood at length, and, striking upwards, approached a clump of huge forest trees on the brow of a ridge. All kinds of parasites hung from the branches; there were ropes and bands of green, and high up a fringe of purple glory that caused Scarlett’s pulses to leap a little faster.