Not all of what he told me went into the story. There was some that dealt with intimate matters one doesn't print. There was some that dealt with tribal customs, markings of different tribes, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, I rather avoided some of these definite facts. Because I felt the whole thing was fiction, I was rather careful to keep from setting down definite data, using only such as seemed necessary.
Then, after the story had been written and mailed, after I
RAIN MAGIC 61
had returned to headquarters, I chanced to get some books dealing with the locality covered in the story, telling of tribal characteristics, racial markings, et cetera.
To my surprise, I found that every fact given me by the old prospector was true. I became convinced that his story was, at least, founded on fact.
And, so I consider "Rain Magic" the most remarkable story I ever had anything to do with. I'm sorry I colored it up with fiction of my own invention. I wish I'd left it as it was, regardless of lack of connective incident and consistent motivation.
Somewhere in the shifting sands of the California desert is an old prospector, hiding from the rain, digging for gold, cherishing lost memories. His sun-puckered eyes have seen sights that few men have seen. His life has been a tragedy so weird, so bizarre that it challenges credulity. Yet of him it can be said, "He has lived."
—ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
Chapter 1—Through The Breakers
No, no—no more coffee. Thanks. Been asleep, eh? Well, don't look so worried about it. Mighty nice of you to wake me up. What day is it?
Thursday, eh? I've been asleep two days then—oh, it is? Then it's been nine days. That's more like it. It was the rain, you see. I tried to get back to my tent, but the storm came up too fast. It's the smell of the damp green things in a rain. The doctors tell me it's auto-hypnosis. They're wrong. M'Camba told me I'd always be that way when I smelled the jungle smell. It's the sleeping sickness in my veins. That's why I came to the desert. It doesn't rain out here more than once or twice a year.
When it does rain the jungle smells come back and the sleeping sickness gets me. Funny how my memory comes back after those long sleeps. It was the drugged bread, king-kee they called it; but the language ain't never been written down. Sort of a graduated monkey talk it was.
It's hot here, come over in the shadow of this Joshuay palm. That's better.
Ever been to sea? No? Then you won't understand.
It was down off the coast of Africa. Anything can happen off the coast of Africa. After the storms, the Sahara dust comes and paints the rigging white. Yes, sir, three hundred miles out to sea I've seen it. And for a hundred miles you can get the smell of the jungles. When the wind's right
It was an awful gale. You don't see 'em like it very often. We tried to let go the deckload of lumber, but the chains jammed. The Dutchmen took to the riggin' jabberin' prayers. They were a weak-kneed lot. It was the Irishman that stayed with it. He was a cursin' devil.
He got busy with an ax. The load had listed and we was heeled over to port. The Dutchmen in the riggin' prayin', an' the Irishman down on the lumber cursin'. A wave took him over and then another wave washed him back again. I see it with my own eyes. He didn't give up. He just cursed harder than ever. And he got the chains loose, too. The deck-load slid off and she righted.
But it was heavy weather and it got worse. The sky was just a mass of whirlin' wind and the water came over until she didn't get rid of one wave before the next bunch of green water was on top of her.
The rudder carried away. I thought everything was gone, but she lived through it. We got blown in, almost on top of the shore. When the gale died we could see it. There was a species of palm stickin' up against the sky, tall trees they were, and below 'em was a solid mass of green stuff, and it stunk. The whole thing was decayin' an' steamin' just like the inside of a rotten, damp log.
The old man was a bad one. It was a hell ship an' no mistake. I'd been shanghaied, an' I wanted back. Thirty pound I had in my pocket when I felt the drink rockin' my head. I knew then, but it was too late. The last I remembered was the grinnin' face of the tout smilin' at me through a blue haze.
The grub was rotten. The old man was a devil when he was sober, an' worse when he was drunk. The Irish mate cursed all the time, cursed and worked. Between 'em they drove the men, drove us like sheep.
The moon was half full. After the storm the waves were rollin' in on a good sea breeze. There wasn't any whitecaps. The wind just piled the water up until the breakers stood fourteen feet high before they curled an' raced up the beach.
But the breakers didn't look so bad from the deck of the ship. Not in the light of the half moon they didn't. We'd been at work on the rudder an' there was a raft over the side. I was on watch, an' the old man was drunk, awful drunk. I don't know when the idea came to me, but it seemed to have always been there. It just popped out in front when it got a chance.
I was halfway down the rope before I really knew what I was doin'. My bare feet hit the raft an' my sailor knife was workin' on the rope before I had a chance to even think things over.
But I had a chance on the road in, riding the breakers. I had a chance even as soon as the rope was cut. The old man came and stood on the rail, lookin' at the weather, too drunk to know what he was looking at, but cockin' his bleary eye at the sky outa habit.
He'd have seen me, drunk as he was, if he'd looked down, but he didn't. If he'd caught me then I'd have been flayed alive. He'd have sobered up just special for the occasion.
I drifted away from him. The moon was on the other side of the hull, leavin' it just a big, black blotch o' shadow, ripplin' on the water, heavin' up into the sky. Then I drifted out of the shadow and into golden water. The moon showed over the top of the boat, an' the sharks got busy.
I'd heard they never struck at a man while he was strugglin'. Maybe it's true. I kept movin', hands and feet goin'. The raft was only an inch or two outa water, an' it was narrow. The sharks cut through the water like hissin' shadows. I was afraid one of 'em would grab a hand or a foot an' drag me down, but they didn't. I could keep the rest of me outa the water, but not my hands an' feet. I had to paddle with 'em to get into shore before the wind and tide changed. I sure didn't want to be left floatin' around there with no sail, nor food; nothin' but sharks.
From the ship the breakers looked easy an' lazylike. When I got in closer I saw they were monsters. They'd rise up an' blot out all the land, even the tops of the high trees. Just before they'd break they'd send streamers of spray, high up in the heavens. Then they'd come down with a crash.
But I couldn't turn back. The sharks and the wind and the tide were all against me, and the old man would have killed me.
I rode in on a couple of breakers, and then the third one broke behind me. The raft an' me, an' maybe the sharks all got mixed up together. My feet struck the sand, but they wouldn't stay there.
The strong undertow was cuttin' the sand out from under me. I could feel it racin' along over my toes, an' then I started back an' down.
The undertow sucked me under another wave, somethin' alive brushed against my back, an' then tons o' water came down over me. That time I was on the bottom an' I rolled along with sand an' water bein' pumped into my innards. I thought it was the end, but there was a lull in the big ones, an' a couple o' littie ones came an' rolled me up on the beach.
I was more dead than alive. The water had made me groggy, an' I was sore from the pummelin' I'd got. I staggered up the strip of sand an' into the jungle.
A little ways back was a cave, an' into the cave I flopped. The water oozed out of my insides like from a soaked sponge. My lungs an' stomach an' ears were all full. I tried to get over a log an' let 'er drain out, but I was too weak. I felt everything turnin' black to me.
The next thing I knew it was gettin' dawn an' shadowy shapes were flittin' around. I thought they was black angels an' they were goin' to smother me. They stunk with a musty smell, an' they settled all ov
er me.
Then I could feel the blood runnin' over my skin. It got a little lighter, an' I could see. I was in a bat cave an' the bats were comin' back. They'd found me an' were setdin' on me in clouds, suckin' blood.
I tried to fight 'em off, but it was like fightin' a fog. Sometimes I'd hit 'em, but they'd just sail through the air, an' I couldn't hurt 'em. All the time, they was flutterin' their wings an' lookin' for a chance to get more blood.
I'd got the weight of 'em off, though, an' I staggered out of the cave. They followed me for a ways; but when I got out to where it was gettin' light they went back in the cave. It gets light quick down there in the tropics, an' the light hurt their eyes.
I rolled into the sand an' went to sleep.
When I woke up I heard marchin' feet. It sounded like an army. They was comin' regular like, slow, unhurried, deliberate. It made the chills come up my spine just to hear the boom, boom, boom of those feet.
I crawled deeper into the sand under the shadows of the overhangin' green stuff. Naked men an' women filed out onto the beach.
I watched 'em.
Chocolate-colored they were, an' they talked a funny, squeaky talk. I found afterward some of the words was Fanti and some was a graduated monkey talk. Fanti ain't never been written down.
It's one of the Tshi languages. The Ashantis an' the Fantis an' one or two other tribes speak branches o' the same lingo. But these people spoke part Fanti an' part graduated monkey talk.
An' among 'em was a monkey-man. He was a funny guy. There was coarse hair all over him, an' he had a stub of a tail. His big toes weren't set like mine, but they was twisted like a foot thumb.
No, I didn't notice the toes at the time. I found that out later, while he was sittin' on a limb gettin' ready to shoot a poisoned arrow at me. I thought every minute was my last, an' then was when I noticed the way his foot thumbs wrapped around the limb. Funny how a man will notice litde things when he's near death.
Anyway, this tribe came down an' marched into the water, men, women, an' children. They washed themselves up to the hips, sort of formal, like it was a ceremony. The rest of them they didn't get water on at all. They came out an' rubbed sort of an oil on their arms, chests, an' faces.
Chapter 2—Life Or Death
Finally they all went away, all except a woman an' a little kid. The woman was lookin' for somethin' in the water— fish, maybe. The kid was on a rock about eight feet away, a little shaver he was, an' he had a funny pot-belly. I looked at him an' I looked at her.
I was sick an' I was hungry, an' I was bleedin' from the bats. The smell of the jungle was in my lungs, so I couldn't tell whether the air was full of jungle or whether I was breathin' in jungle stuff with just a little air. It's a queer sensation. Unless you've been through it you wouldn't understand.
Well, I felt it was everything or nothin'. The woman couldn't kill me, an' the kid couldn't. An' I had to make myself known an' get somethin' to eat.
I straightened out of the sand.
"Hello," said I.
The kid was squattin' on his haunches. He didn't seem to jump. He just flew through the air an' he sailed right onto his mother's back. His hands clung to her shoulders an' his head pressed tight against her skin, the eyes rollin' at me, but the head never movin'.
The mother made three jumps right up the sand, an' then she sailed into the air an' caught the branch of a tree. The green stuff was so thick that I lost sight of 'em both right there. I could hear a lot of jabberin' monkey talk in the trees, an' then I heard the squeaky voice of the woman talkin' back to the monkeys. I could tell the way she was goin' by the jabber of monkey talk.
No, I can't remember words of monkey talk. I never got so I could talk to the monkeys. But the people did. I am goin' to tell you about that. I'm explainin' about the sleepin' sickness, an' about how the memories come back to me after I've been asleep.
Maybe they're dreams, but maybe they ain't. If they're dreams, how comes it that when I got to Cape Coast Castle I couldn't remember where I'd been? They brought me in there on stretchers, an' nobody knows how far they'd brought me. They left me in the dead o' night. But the next mornin' there were the tracks, an' they were tracks like nobody there had ever seen before.
There's strange things in Africa, an' this was when I was a young blood, remember that. I was an upstandin' youngster, too. I'd tackle anything, even the west coast of Africa on a raft, an' the Fanti warriors; but I'm comin' to that directly.
Well, the woman ran away, an' the monkeys came. They stuck around on the trees an' jabbered monkey talk at me. I wished I'd been like the woman an' could have talked to 'em. But the monkeys ain't got so many words. There's a lot of it that's just tone stuff. It was the ants that could speak, but they rubbed feelers together.
Oh, yes, there was ants, great, woolly ants two inches long, ants that built houses out of sticks. They built 'em thirty feet high, an' some of the sticks was half an inch round an' six or eight inches long. They had the ants guardin' the gold ledge, an' nobody except Kk-Kk, the feeder, an' the goldsmith could come near there.
The goldsmith was nothin' but a slave, anyway. They'd captured him from a slaver that went ashore. The others died of the fever, but the natives gave the goldsmith some medicine that cured him. After that he couldn't get sick. They could have done the same by me, too, but the monkey-man was my enemy. He wanted Kk-Kk for himself.
Finally I heard the tramp of feet again, an' the warriors of the tribe came out. They had spears an' little bows with long arrows. The arrows were as thin as a pencil. They didn't look like they'd hurt anything, but there was a funny color on the points, a sort of shimmering something.
I found out afterward that was where they'd coated 'em with poison an' baked the poison into the wood. One scratch with an arrow like that an' a man or a beast would die. But it didn't hurt the flesh none for eatin'. Either of man or beast it didn't. They ate 'em both.
I saw it was up to me to make a speech. The men all looked serious an' dignified. That is, they all did except the monkey-man. He capered around on the outside. His balance didn't seem good on his two feet, so he'd stoop over an' use the backs of his knuckles to steady himself. He could hitch along over the ground like the wind. His arms were long, long an' hairy, an' the inside of his palms was all wrinkled, thick an' black.
Anyhow, I made a speech.
I told 'em that I was awful tough, an' that I was thin, an' maybe the bat bites had poisoned me, so I wouldn't advise 'em to cook me. I told 'em I was a friend an' I didn't come to bother 'em, but to get away from the big ship that was layin' offshore.
I thought they understood me, because some of 'em was lookin' at the ship. But I found out afterward they didn't. They'd seen the ship, an' they'd seen me, an' they saw the dried salt water on my clothes, an' they figgered it out for themselves.
I finished with my speech. I didn't expect 'em to clap their hands, because they had spears an' bows, but I thought maybe they'd smile. They was a funny bunch, all gathered around there in a circle, grave an' naked like. An' they all had three scars on each side of their cheek bones. It made 'em look tough.
Then the monkey-man gave a sort of a leap an' lit in the trees, an' the monkeys came around and jabbered, an' he jabbered, an' somehow I thought he was tellin' the monkeys about me. Maybe he was.
An' then from the jungle behind me I heard a girl's voice, an' it was speakin' good English.
"Be silent and I shall speak to my father," she said.
You can imagine how I felt hearin' an English voice from the jungle that way, an' knowin' it was a girl's voice. But I knew she wasn't a white woman. I could tell that by the sound of the voice, sort of the way the tongue didn't click against the roof of the mouth, but the lips made the speech soft like.
An' then there was a lot of squeaky talk from the jungles. There was silence after that talk, an' then I heard the girl's voice again.
"They've gone for the goldsmith. He'll talk to you."
I didn't s
ee who had gone, an' I didn't know who the goldsmith was. I turned around an' tried to see into the jungle, but all I could see was leaves, trunks an' vine stems. There was a wispy blue vapor that settled all around an' overhead the air was white way way up, white with Sahara dust. But down low the jungle odor hung around the ground. Around me the circle stood naked an' silent. Not a man moved.
Who was the goldsmith?—I wondered. Who was the girl?
Then I heard steps behind me an' the jungle parted. I smelled somethin' burnin'. It wasn't tobacco, not the kind we have, but it was a sort of a tobacco flavor.
A man came out into the circle, smokin' a pipe.
"How are yuh?" he says, an' sticks forward a hand.
He was a white man, part white anyway, an' he had on some funny clothes. They were made of skins, but they were cut like a tailor would cut 'em. He even had a skin hat with a stiff brim. He'd made the stiff brim out of green skin with the hair rubbed off.
He was smokin' a clay pipe, an' there was a vacant look in his eyes, a blank somethin' like a man who didn't have feelin's any more, but was just a man-machine.
I shook hands with him.
"Are they goin' to eat me?" I asks.
He smoked awhile before he spoke, an' then he takes the pipe out of his mouth an' nods his head. "Sure," he says. It wasn't encouragin'.
"Have hope," came the voice from the jungle, the voice of the girl. She seemed to be standin' close, close an' keepin' in one place, but I couldn't see her.
I talked to the man with the pipe. I made him a speech He turned around and talked to the circle of men, an' they didn't say anything.
Finally an old man grunted, an' like the grunt was an order they all squatted down on their haunches, all of 'em facin' me.
Then the girl in the jungle made squeaky noises. The old man seemed to be listenin' to her. The others didn't listen to anything. They were just starin' at me, an' the expression on all of the faces was the same. It was sort of a curiosity, but it wasn't a curiosity to see what I looked like. I felt it was a curiosity to see what I'd taste like.
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