by John Wyndham
“I tried to stop him. What’s the use…?”
I poured her another brandy. She looked as if she needed it. Ten minutes later, looking somewhat recovered, she said:
“We’d better join them.”
We found them where we expected. Four men with spades were digging a grave alongside David’s. Joe Shuttleshaw was sitting on a fallen tree, a little apart, looking utterly blank. His wife knelt beside him, her arms round him, tears running down her face. He seemed unaware of her. His burden lay on the ground close by, covered with a blanket now. His eyes never left it. The rest stood around, silent and horrified.
Charles said his prayer again – and included in it names of the six others who had been on the exploring party. The sight of Andrew Shuttleshaw’s body had altogether banished the idea of sending an expedition to bring the others in. Then we dispersed, most of us in a very thoughtful mood.
It was in the evening that a deputation called on Walter. It consisted of Joe Shuttleshaw, his wife, and Jeremy Brandon, and its purpose was to tender their resignations from the Project. They demanded that a message should be sent to the Susannah Dinghy calling her back to take them – and anyone else who had changed his mind – off. Calling at Uijanji, as she was scheduled to do, they argued that she could not have got very far away yet. If that were not possible, then Uijanji itself could doubtless provide a smaller boat to get them that far.
Walter, who had been postponing the news about the radio-transmitter was thus forced to lay the whole situation before them. Joe lost his temper, and refused to believe him until he was taken to see the damaged transmitter. After contemplating its undeniable uselessness for some moments, he turned on Walter and more or less accused him of wrecking it himself in order to prevent anyone from walking out on his precious Project.
At this point Charles was called in to give Walter support. He succeeded after a time in bringing the deputation to its senses – or near enough to them for its members to retire and reconsider among themselves.
The following morning, faced by a state of subdued mutiny, Charles called everyone together, and put the situation squarely before us. It was that without means of communication we were on our own for six months. If, when the ship returned, anyone wished to leave, he was at liberty to do so. In the meantime everything would depend on our own efforts. The area of infestation appeared to be no closer than a mile and a half away. There was no telling at what rate it would approach us, or, indeed, that it would approach at all, though it would be wise to assume that it might.
The obvious course, then, was to press on with the erection of the sectional buildings. The sooner they were up, the sooner we should have quarters that could be rendered safe from infestation. Furthermore, our present makeshift arrangements would give us little protection against rain and storms once the weather broke.
Squabbles and recriminations would get us nowhere. We were all together in the same boat. The survival of all depended on the work of each of us. Our setback had been the result of an entirely unexpected condition. Now we knew what the danger was we should no longer be taken by surprise: we could take steps to protect ourselves.
The first step, he suggested, was to create a barrier against the spiders. To do this he proposed to use the bulldozer to clear a perimeter strip some six feet wide which would enclose both our present quarters and the settlement site. At points along this would be spraying apparatus kept ready charged. A patrol would be maintained beyond the strip, and at any sign of the infestation approaching an alarm would be given and the whole length of the strip would be sprayed with insecticide. This, as Camilla had shown, was an effective deterrent and would present the spiders with a barrier they could not cross. That would be our first line of defence, and even if it should not be one hundred per cent effective, the buildings would give us complete security, once they were completed.
He also recommended each of us to contrive for ourselves an outfit such as Camilla and Joe had worn the previous day, and to acquire the habit of wearing it whenever we went outside the perimeter.
Charles, one must say, made a good job of it. He considerably reduced the bogey quality of the spiders, and replaced it with the feeling that they were simply an unusual pest which could be foiled, and most likely overcome, by work and ingenuity. His air of confidence was infectious. We trooped off to work with a greatly improved morale. In the evening Camilla sought me out.
“Hullo,” I said. “I haven’t seen you working. Where’ve you been all the day?”
“Spider-watching,” she told me. “I’ve just had a dressing-down from Walter about it. Not as such,” she added, “he agrees that the more we know about their habits, the better we’ll be able to tackle them. He’s annoyed with me for going alone.”
“And very properly,” I agreed. “It was a ridiculous thing to do. Suppose you’d broken an ankle, or just sprained it. Nobody would have had any idea where to look for you.”
“That’s more or less what he said,” she told me. “I promised I wouldn’t go again unaccompanied. But that raises a problem. I suppose you wouldn’t care to do escort duty tomorrow?”
I hadn’t seen that coming. It took me rather aback. I hesitated.
“Well – ” I began.
“It’s all right. You don’t have to come,” she said.
“No. I’ll come,”I decided. “What do I need?”
“The same kind of outfit as Joe and I wore. Spray-gun. A pair of field-glasses.”
“Very well,” I agreed. “Now show me how to weave a hat.”
We set off the following morning, carrying our hats and veils until they were needed. For a couple of miles we could keep to the beach, walking just above the water line where the sand was firm, and the going easy. That brought us to the end of the lagoon and the first rocks of the headland. We climbed up them on to the low cliffs. There progress slowed; from time to time, we were held up by the necessity of hacking our way through thickets.
There was no sign of web on the bushes yet, but Camilla considered it wise to put on our veils, and use the sprays on one another.
“As far as I can see at present,” she said, “the webbed area represents conquered and settled spider territory with an outward pressure of population. Between that and us is a strip of unsettled country prowled over by roving bands of spiders. Troops of pioneers, as it were, gradually pressing forward into new lands, while the territory behind them fills up. One thing we ought to think up is some means of determining their average rate of progress. That would give us an idea of how much time we have to make preparations. Or, whether perhaps we ought to move further north to gain more time before they reach us.”
“That would be difficult,” I told her. “We’re more or less anchored where we are by our supplies. We couldn’t move them far from our present position.”
“Probably the best way is to think in terms of defences,” she agreed. “But it would help to know when to have them ready.”
We emerged from the bushes presently on to a somewhat higher rocky headland. It gave us the best view we had yet had along the coast ahead and of the shoulder of the southernmost of the twin hills, and we sat down and looked at it, filled with awe.
The webbed area began so gradually that it was impossible to determine the edge of it. It started as a tenuous, uncertain haze which about a mile away along the coast ceased to be transparent and became to all appearances a solid sheet, as if the whole tract of land behind the coastline to a level halfway up the hillside had been covered by a fall of slightly yellow snow. Or perhaps the uneven outlines of the shrouded trees made it look more like a cloudfield seen from the air. Here and there it glistered with iridescence in the sunlight…
We went on looking at it in silence for a minute or more. My mind felt swamped by the uncountable numbers, the billions of spiders it must represent. It was Camilla who spoke first, and out of a different mood.
“What price the balance of nature?” she observed.
We wen
t on. There was still little or no web on the bushes we passed, but presently we began to encounter packs of spiders hunting on the ground. The first of these I did not perceive until it actually attacked. It came out of the bushes on my left and was around my feet before I realized. I involuntarily jumped aside. Behind me Camilla said: “It’s all right. They won’t hurt you.”
She was quite right. They swarmed over my boots, some of them started to run up my legs as far as the knee, but then they abruptly lost interest, dropped off, and scuttled away. Those around my boots soon withdrew, too.
“Spiders smell, or taste, with their feet – and they don’t like the stuff a bit,” Camilla said calmly.
I went on with restored confidence. We encountered a dozen or more such troops but they all retired discouraged. Soon we came out on another headland overlooking a small bay with a beach. I remembered noticing it from the sea, and identified it as the last forest-bounded piece of coast before the line of unbroken cliffs began. The line of bushes with a few trees among them came down to meet the edge of the sand which had already a greyer tinge than that on our side of the island. Dotted about the sand were seven or eight familiar shapeless brown patches.
“Ah,” said Camilla, with satisfaction.
This particular area of the headland appeared to be free of spiders so we sat down, and took out our glasses.
Mine told me little. The groups of spiders were so tightly bunched together that no individuals were discernible and I could see little more than with the naked eye. I tried one group after another, all looked identical, and immobile. I lowered the glasses, and then heard Camilla give an exclamation under her breath. As I was about to follow her line of sight a movement of one of the patches caught my eye. I raised the glasses again and saw it travelling, still as an inseparable unit, on a slant down the beach.
“Something’s stirred them,” I said, as I noticed a second patch start to move.
“It’s that crab,” said Camilla. “Look up by the trees.”
I turned my glasses on a black speck there and saw that it was indeed a crab. It was about five feet out from the trees, scuttling down the beach towards the water. Further down, two of the brown patches were flowing along in converging lines to cut him off. The crab swerved, a few seconds later the two patches altered course to intercept him at a different point.
Suddenly the crab stopped, and stood motionless, claws upraised and ready. The two spider-groups continued on their way, then gradually they slowed up, finally coming to a halt within a couple of feet of one another. The crab started off again on a new slant towards the water. He might have made it, for he appeared to have slightly more speed than the spiders, but by now a third group of the spiders was on the move, converging on this new course. He seemed not to have noticed them until they were close upon him. At the last moment he swerved again but too late. The spider-groups swarmed over him. He managed to run on for a couple of feet, then he slowed, stopped, and was lost to sight under the mass of spiders.
Camilla lowered her glasses.
“Instructive,” she said. Their top speed as a group seems to be about four miles an hour. Their sight is bad – as with most spiders. Did you notice – they lost him when he stopped still? They anticipated his line of travel, and aimed to intercept. That’s most interesting – it implies that they collectively knew he’d be making for the water. And then when he changed course they did, too – after a delay of a few seconds – again to a line of interception. Very curious…
“But the amazing thing is that they got him – a crab, armoured all over – and stopped him in a couple of feet. They must have gone for his eyes, of course – and perhaps his limb joints, though one wouldn’t think…”
She pondered a moment, and then lifted the glasses again, and directed them at a nearer group which she had been watching before the crab incident. We both watched them for some little while in silence. They were not travelling, but neither were they static as the other groups were, indeed they were in a state of continuous activity, much as was the group swarming over the crab.
“Maybe it was just another crab,” I suggested after a time.
It was near to eleven o’clock. After our early start I was feeling hungry. I pulled some sandwiches out of my haversack, and offered her one. We sat there munching, but keeping an eye out for further events on the beach.
The day was warm – too warm for comfort, dressed as we were, but I felt no temptation to remove any of our precautions in an area where a band of spiders might materialize at any moment. The only concession I made was to fold the veil up on to the hat brim, whence it could be dropped again in a split-second. The hat itself I was glad of, for the sunlight poured down strongly from an unclouded sky. I longed for a cooling breeze, but there was scarcely a breath stirring.
Camilla, who had shifted her attention from the bay, to gaze at the great sheet of web further along the coast, gave a sudden exclamation, and grabbed her glasses. What she was looking at I couldn’t at first make out. Then I saw a tenuous column rising from the spread of white. One could only make it out against the blue background of the sky, and then so thinly as to be barely certain of it. Camilla tilted her head back, following it up and up. I picked up my glasses, too, I found it, and traces of it going up to a tremendous height, but could make nothing of it. For a moment I wondered whether it might be steam from the hot-spring, but realized almost at once that that would disappear after a hundred feet or so. Then I noticed another vapour-like column rising from further away. This one showed a distinct kink at something over a thousand feet, but went on to climb much higher. A sweep with the glasses revealed three more distant columns, and traces of others that I couldn’t be sure of. I lowered the glasses, and looked at the white covering again.
“We must have been wrong about that. It can’t be web; it’s something evaporating,” I said.
Camilla shook her head.
“It’s web all right. What that is,” – she nodded towards the nearest of the columns – “is emigration. Spiders for export. They’ve found a thermal, and are going up with it. Millions of baby spiders setting out into the world.”
I said, incredulously: “Spiders can’t fly.”
“Given the right conditions, they can – baby spiders. Web is a wonderful thing. Did you never read The Voyage of the Beagle? How they woke one morning more than a hundred miles from land to find the whole deck and the spars covered with little spiders?
“What they do on a nice calm, warm day is to climb to a high point – the top of a tree, or a bush, or even a blade of grass will do – spin out a few inches of silk, and wait. Sooner or later the silk will be caught by a rising thermal and lift them off. Then they go up with the thermal, just as a glider does. It may take them up twenty thousand feet or more. That’s what’s happening over there.”
I looked at the vaporous columns and tried to imagine it. Millions upon millions of baby spiders launching themselves into space on the chance that the wind would carry them to a new land.
“They’ll all come down in the sea,” I said.
“Ninety-nine point nine nine nine per cent of them will,” she agreed, “but what does that matter with a fecundity like theirs? Some of them will survive, and breed.” She glanced again at the columns. “Fortunately they’re going high and the direction of the upper air is easterly. That, I imagine, must be the prevailing wind in these conditions, carrying them away from our side, otherwise the whole of the island would have been overrun already.”
As she stopped speaking I caught sight of a movement on the edge of the piece of open ground to our left. Camilla noticed it, too. A troop of spiders emerged from the rough grass, coming towards us. I made to get up, but she stopped me.
“Don’t move, and they won’t notice us. Remember the crab,” she said, and continued to watch them with a confidence I was far from sharing as they approached.
There must have been three or four hundred in the group. It was the first chance we had had
of observing them closely when they were on the move and not actually engaged in an attack. Even so, it was difficult to distinguish individual spiders. They moved with such uniformity, packed so closely together that it was hard to see how they had room to use their legs. Even at close quarters they presented the appearance of flowing along as a single body.
We were sitting directly in their path. Had I been alone I should certainly have got out of their way. Camilla, who was nearer to them than I, simply continued to regard them with interest.
About four inches short of her leg the entire group stopped as one. I was reminded of a well-drilled squad of soldiers coming to a halt. Presumably the leading members had caught a whiff of the insecticide, and found it distasteful. After a momentary pause the whole lot did a left turn and marched on keeping four inches from the leg until the boot was passed. Then they did a right turn, and continued on their interrupted way.
We watched them disappear beneath a low bush on the other side.
“Well, well! A fine, disciplined body of troops,” said Camilla.
She picked up her glasses again, and resumed her study of the beach below, dwelling for some time on the nearest group. It was still active, apparently without purpose. After watching for some minutes she said: “They’re digging. Scooping a hollow.”
I looked, too. She seemed to be right. There was now a sloping bank of sand to one side that I had not seen there before. But what the purpose was I could not make out. There were too many spiders scrambling about the excavation for me to see it clearly. Presently, however, Camilla laid down her glasses, with a sigh.
“Well, well, well!” she said again.
“What is it?”I asked.
“Turtle’s eggs. That’s what they’re after,” she told me, and became thoughtful. Presently she lifted her gaze to the tegumented stretch of forest.
“I wonder what it’s like in there?” she murmured. “They’ve finished off the birds – presumably the eggs first, and then the birds themselves – they’ve reduced the insect population close to zero. Presumably they’ve polished off anything else that walked, or crawled. There can be very little left to eat there now but one another. The survival of the fittest, with a vengeance! They’ve been driven to hunting the sea margin for food. How long, I wonder, before they learn to catch fish?”
