by George Worts
Introduction to the Best of Argosy
by Robert Weinberg
The Monster of the Lagoon — Argosy February 23, 1935 — March 30, 1935
by George Worts
Sammy Shay — Singapore Sam, they called him — was only one of several adventurers heading toward the weirdest mystery of the South Seas. Such an evil name had the South Sea Island of Little Nicobar that few white men had ever gone there. Legend said that a terrible monster, which no man had ever seen and lived to tell of, lived in the lagoon on the island.
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Copyright © 1935 by Popular Publications, Inc. Copyright renewed © 1963 and assigned to Argosy Communications, Inc. “Argosy” and its distinctive logo and symbolism and all related elements are trademarks and are the property of Argosy Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. © 2014 RadioArchives.com. Reprinted and produced under license from Argosy Communications, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form.
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Introduction to The Best of Argosy
By Robert Weinberg
Perhaps the most profitable decision ever made in American magazine publishing was made by Frank A. Munsey in 1896. Munsey had started a magazine titled The Golden Argosy in 1882, aimed at the boy’s adventure audience. In 1888, he dropped the word Golden as he tried to move to an older audience. In 1894, Munsey began publishing The Argosy as a monthly magazine. Two years later, he made his big decision. Reasoning that his readership bought his magazine for the stories it contained and not the paper the magazine was printed upon, Munsey started publishing The Argosy on much cheaper pulp-wood paper instead of the slick white paper used by nearly all magazines. This bold move enabled him to drop the price of his all-fiction magazine from a quarter to a dime. Munsey’s reasoning proved correct and The Argosy magazine became one of the best selling publications in America.
The goal of Argosy, (the The being dropped over the years) was to publish the best adventure and action fiction for men and boys. Not that women were neglected as there was plenty of romance mixed in with the danger. But, Argosy remained true to its purpose for well over a thousand issues, printing the top-of-the-line stories by the world’s greatest masters of exciting fiction.
The purpose of this series, The Best of Argosy, is to make available to modern adventure fans some of the finest stories ever published in the 1920s and 1930s issues of Argosy. This period is considered, by most pulp magazine historians, the magazine’s greatest. While many of the tremendous tales from these eras have been reprinted in book and paperback format, many many others have been forgotten and never before been reprinted. The Best of Argosy will make available incredible stories by such writers as George F. Worts, William Grey Beyer, Arthur Leo Zagat, Ray Cummings, Borden Chase, and dozens of others. Fire up your ray gun, cinch your saddle, put your car into gear – it’s time to revisit the golden age of pulp adventure with The Best of Argosy!
Robert Weinberg
The Monster of the Lagoon
by George Worts, author of “Isle of the Meteor”
from the pages of Argosy February 23, 1935 — March 30, 1935
Sammy Shay — Singapore Sam, they called him — was only one of several adventurers heading toward the weirdest mystery of the South Seas. Such an evil name had the South Sea Island of Little Nicobar that few white men had ever gone there. Legend said that a terrible monster, which no man had ever seen and lived to tell of, lived in the lagoon on the island.
Chapter 1: Jungle Gauntlet
THE lagoon at Little Nicobar was like a staring Cyclopean eye, an eye that was all pupil and a mile in diameter, as blue as the sapphire, as round as the moon, with a narrow rim of white, which was the coral beach, and for lashes a curving row of coconut palms leaning to the southeast trade.
It was an evil eye, this blue lagoon, for it contained — as a human eye can contain a hideous thought — a creature so monstrous that it was feared and shunned by all men.
Perhaps the blood-chilling legend of the monster was encouraged by the appearance at night of thin clouds of steam from bubbling volcanic mudpots in the jungle. With the coming of night, these bubbling vats sent their greasy vapors out over the lagoon, as if to veil its obscenity.
Among the native islanders in this little known corner of the Indian Ocean, the legend was old — older than the memory of the oldest tribes. They believed that the monster was inhabited by a human soul — the soul of the first man to walk the earth. And they believed that the soul of this earliest man was a hateful, foul and monstrous think.
Intrepid adventurers as long ago as the Fourteenth Century mentioned the monster in their writings. Sir John Mandeville, whose travels took place between 1325 and 1355, refers as follows to the legend: “In all my voiages and traveils the most strange intelligence to come to me is of an isle that men clepe Small Nicobarre. Hereon grows all manner of spicery, as of giner, cloves, gilofre, canell, seedwall, nutmegs and maces, and flowers that are big as men. And also on this isle there do be hot mud wells that no man may suffer his hand within, and there be also a great monster in a lagoon. This Beeste is a strange and dreadful creature that does eat men.”
In the Sixteenth Century a Portuguese named Sequira brought back strange tales of his voyages. He told of people with tails like sheep, of hens that laid eggs nine feet underground, of a strange and awful monster in a lake fed by the sea. In the logs of Captain James Cook’s first and third voyages to Polynesia, in the late Eighteenth Century, we find several allusions to “the most horrible and hungriest monster ever known to mankind.” Only one man had been known through all the ages to see The Thing and survive.
This one man was a modern, a Dutchman named Gurt Vandernoot. And Gurt Vandernoot has been the source of wildest conjecture. How he came to build himself a small fortress of a house on the very edge of the lagoon no man can say. Shrouded likewise in mystery is the life this man lived there for upwards of fifteen years. Some say he was a pearler; others ascribe to him the practice of the blackest arts. He was not on friendly terms with the natives of Little Nicobar. Why they tolerated him on their island is a mystery in itself.
The fact remains that Gurt Vandernoot lived unmolested in his stout little fortress on the lagoon for many years, and it must be presumed that he saw the monster frequently, was familiar with its nature and its habits, and could have described it to the world had he wished. Only one other fact is known: some time during the year 1907 Gurt Vandernoot mysteriously vanished, and was never seen again. There were rumors of vast stores of pearls which he spent those fifteen years fishing for in the lagoon.
There were rumors of a strange, mystical bond between man and monster. There were rumors that the monster had at last devoured him. Even with most of the known facts now in hand, few of these rumors can be affirmed or denied. Gurt Vandernoot lived and died a man of mystery.
With the exception of Gurt Vandernoot, no one in all the centuries apparently had the curiosity or the audacity to visit the island and verify or disprove the
legend of the nameless monster of the lagoon or the old stories of the cruel “Gauntlet of Death” which appears to have been the islanders’ favorite diversion, when a shipwreck victim fell into their ghoulish hands.
Luther Thorwald, a British able seaman, is believed to have been the last of the long succession of unfortunates who were castaways on Little Nicobar, and who were, according to age-old tribal custom, sent to assuage the monster’s awful appetite. We shall see that this appetite was so gross, so insatiable, so terrible that it surpassed human imagination.
The last days, hours, and minutes of the British seaman cannot be described here with the authority of any official records. What befell him must be pieced together from hearsay and scraps of evidence mustered from a variety of sources, some dependable, others too tinged with the scarlet of horror to be taken without a grain of salt.
We know definitely that Luther Thorwald was washed ashore on a hatch cover on the island from the wreck of the British tramp freighter Nellie Blarston, of Liverpool, sometime between the afternoon of November 12th and the evening of November 13th, 1933. The rest we can assume with reasonable certainty, so that the subsequent steps of the ill-starred wretch toward a hideous doom can be set down with fair accuracy.
We can picture the late Luther Thorwald drifting closer and closer to the inviting silver strand of Little Nicobar, no doubt blinded by the glare of the equatorial sun on the glassy ocean, his skin lobster-red and blistered, his tongue parched or black with thirst.
Eventually, the hatch cover, carried by coastal and tidal currents and the wash of the sea, was deposited on the beach of Little Nicobar. The luckless white man was instantly swarmed upon by native blacks with spears and shields, and prodded into the presence of a most amazing individual — a white man with a black beard, who ruled the Little Nicobar tribe.
The presence of a white chieftain might well have increased the host of Little Nicobar legends, had not an American expedition in the early spring of 1934 visited the island for the purpose of capturing the monster of the lagoon, of “bringing it back alive” — an expedition which is the chief concern of this chronicle.
Of Luther Thorwald they learned very little except that he enjoyed the doubtful distinction of being the last man to run that “Gauntlet of Death” — into the digestive system of nameless monster.
Like all his predecessors, he was held captive until his strength returned. He was treated as if he were an honored guest. He was given his choice of the island maidens, and he was fed and fattened for a period of two weeks.
At the end of this time he became the central figure in as bizarre a ceremony as the Far East can afford. A great central camp fire was built. Tom-toms and native musical instruments were played at faster and faster tempo as the tribesmen danced. At midnight, or when the dancing reached its most frenzied pitch, Luther Thorwald was told he must attempt to escape from the island.
The black-bearded white chieftain gave him instructions. The tribesmen, armed with spears, would scatter through the jungle. At a signal, Luther Thorwald was to run for it. He was to run for the lagoon. If he reached a small boat, a canoe, he would gain his freedom.
He must run this gauntlet of death, through the jungle to the canoe, which contained, so he was told, an adequate supply of water and food to suffice him until he reached Sumatra.
The odds, the startled and horrified seaman was told, were possibly a hundred to one against him. Through the centuries the monster of the lagoon, with its diabolical intelligence, had learned the meaning of the great camp fire and the frenzied dancing. It meant but one thing to the monster — a morsel for its gargantuan appetite.
So, on the night of nights in the life of Luther Thorwald, when he was told to make his dash for freedom — he dashed. He had come to know the island fairly well. Doubtless, as he ran the length of the island, toward the lagoon, he congratulated himself on his cleverness in eluding the savages. He had been warned that if he failed to reach the end of the gauntlet, if he were captured, he would be broiled alive and eaten; for the tribesmen of Little Nicobar have always been cannibals.
He could not guess that this threat was part of the unholy farce, that every man who had made that mad dash for liberty always complimented himself on his cleverness in eluding the spearmen when he saw ahead of him, through the steaming jungle, the loom of the lagoon.
Luther Thorwald saw it as in a misty mirror. Off to his right, the panting, plunging man heard the sinister bubbling of the volcanic mud pots. And he saw the thin clouds of steam trailing in spectral plumes over the lagoon.
In a last burst of energy he sprinted toward the beach, plunging through the heavy, sickly sweet odor of the man-size pale-blue orchids, the monster flowers of the Little Nicobar jungles.
He doubtless reached the beach. The grinning black watchers in the jungle did not know. They did not look. Fear handed down through generations made them face in the opposite direction, for no islander dared look upon the monster.
The doomed man must have stopped at the water’s edge, paralyzed with terror. His awful scream was an announcement that he had seen the monster. Then came a horrified babbling, as of a man suddenly bereft of his sanity. This was followed by a bleating and a bubbling and the sound of crumbling bones. Then — silence, disturbed only by the eternal chuckling of the volcanic mud pots.
Chapter 2: Meet Mr. Barling
ACCORDING to the marine reporter of the Penang Daily Times, the Wanderer, of New York, was the finest, most luxurious yacht ever to drop anchor in the harbor of Penang. She was a small edition of an ocean liner, some three hundred feet in length, with a rated value in Lloyd’s Register of one million pounds, sterling. Diesel engines and twin screws gave her a cruising speed of twenty-eight knots. She had accommodations for twenty guests and she carried a crew of thirty-five, including a French chef and a doctor. Her owner was Hector Tobias Barling, the American patent medicine millionaire.
To quote from the Penang Daily Times “The Wanderer is making a cruise of the world, having left New York City four months ago. Mr. Barling and his two guests, Mrs. Mabel Farrington and her daughter, Miss Julie Farrington, are following no set itinerary, but, true to the name of their luxurious craft, are wandering: where the whim dictates, in the most happy-go-lucky of spirits. The Wanderer will remain two or three days in Penang, then proceed to Johor, where Mr. Barling and his guests will be entertained by the maharaja.”
The account was written in a jolly vein, and the impression it gave was that Mr. Barling and his guests were three care-free adventurers on a wonderful lark, flitting willy-nilly from port to port, poking into amusing out-of-the-way places, gaily taking life as they found it.
The truth was gloomily otherwise. At the moment, Hector Tobias Barling, the multi-millionaire patent medicine monarch, was striding up and down a lustrous Afghan rug in the Wanderer’s palatial drawing-room, setting his heels down hard and telling Mrs. Mabel Farrington how utterly fed up he was with it all. Plump, blonde, pink little Mrs. Farrington was softly weeping into a lacy handkerchief.
Mr. Barling was puffing and snorting as he paced. He was a chunky little man in his late forties, with a cherubic countenance, pale-blue eyes with lashes as white as a pig’s, and a wisp of blond mustache. He had utterly no sense of humor, and when denied his wishes he pouted.
“I give it up,” he declared in his high-pitched, irritable voice. “I’ve done my best. I’ve given her what amounts to a magic carpet for seeing the world. I treat her slightest whim as a command. I’ve thrown my heart at her feet. And she jeers at me! She has nothing but scorn and contempt for me!”
“Julie is bored and restless, Hector. She needs diversion.”
Sometimes he hated this pink, grasping, sniffling woman enough to throw her overboard. He knew she detested him. He knew she wanted him for a son-in-law only because he was a multi-millionaire.
“Why not take her ashore?” Mrs. Farrington suggested.
“Now? Tonight?”
“Why
not go slumming — just the two of you?”
Mr. Barling stared at her a moment, as if she had lost her senses. Then he nodded judicially and strode out of the drawing-room.
He roamed about the deck, and he found her presently in the bows, as far forward as she could get, a slim, blonde girl in the moonlight, as romantic as the mysterious shore lights at which she was apparently gazing; a slim blonde girl, who in any kind of light, always made Mr. Barling go hot and cold all over.
He approached on tiptoe. He wanted to sweep her into his arms, but he had learned that such a method was perilous.
“Julie!” he whispered.
She turned about quickly with her wonderful smile. It dimmed when she saw who it was. The suspicion flitted darkly over Mr. Barling’s mind that she had been expecting or hoping it would be some one else, that cocky first officer of his, Mr. McTavish, or Mr. Axelrod, the chief engineer, both young men.
“Look, Hector,” she said, and pointed.
He looked first at her slim, soft, bare arm, then at what she was indicating. It was a two-masted schooner with well-raked masts which had swung broadside to them and was now lying in a puddle of silver, a shimmering little lake laid there by the moon.
“What about it?” he said practically.
Julie Farrington sighed. “Have you ever heard of the primrose by the river’s brim?” she countered.
It sounded so much like one of her mother’s questions that Hector Barling’s voice, when he replied contained a note of irritation.
“Never,” he said.
“Then you wouldn’t understand.”
He pouted. “What about the primrose? What about the schooner?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Julie Farrington said in her most musical voice, the dreamy one. “What port do you suppose she’s from? Where do you suppose she’s going?”