by Unknown
Was I falling asleep, or being mesmerised by this homicidal lunatic? As he glared at me with those fiery orbs and an evil contortion curling the blood-red lips, while the forked lightning played around him, I became helpless. He was creeping slowly toward me as a cat might steal upon a mouse, and I was unable to move, or take my eyes from his, which seemed to be charming my life-blood from me, when suddenly, I heard the distant sound of music, through the lull of the tempest, the rippling of a piano from the drawing-room with the mingling of a child's silvery voice as it sang its evening hymn, and at the sound his eyes shifted while he fell back a step or two, with an agonised spasm crossing his ghastly and dripping wet face.
Then the hurricane broke loose once more, with a resistless fury, while the door and window burst open, and the shutters were dashed into the room.
I leapt to my feet in a paroxysm of horror, and sprang toward the open door with that demon, or maniac, behind me.
Merciful heavens! the drawing-room was brilliantly lighted up, and there, seated at the open piano, was the woman whose bones I had seen bleaching upstairs, with the seraphic-faced child singing her hymn.
Out to the tempest I rushed madly, and heedless of where I went, so that I escaped from that accursed and haunted house, on, past the water-hole and into the glade, where I turned my head back instinctively, as I heard a wilder roar of thunder and the crash as if a tree had been struck.
What a flash that was which lighted up the scene and showed me the house collapsing as an erection of cards. It went down like an avalanche before that zig-zag flame, which seemed to lick round it for a moment, and then disappear into the earth.
Next instant I was thrown off my feet by the earthquake that shook the ground under me, while, as I still looked on where the house had been, I saw that the ruin had caught fire, and was blazing up in spite of the torrents that still poured down, and as it burned, I saw the mound sink slowly out of sight, while the reddened smoke eddied about in the same strange shapes which the vapours had assumed the night before, scarlet ghosts of the demon and his victims.
Two months after this, I woke up to find myself in a Queensland back-country station. They had found me wandering in a delirious condition over one of their distant runs six weeks before my return to consciousness, and as they could not believe that a pedestrian, without provisions, could get over that unknown stretch of country from Fremantle, they paid no attention to my ravings about being an escaped convict, particularly as the rags I had on could never have been prison made. Learning, however, that I had medical knowledge, by the simple method of putting it to the test, my good rescuers set me up in my old profession, where I still remain – a Queensland back-country doctor.
THE SMOKING LEG
John Metcalfe
The lascar fellow whom Geoghan, the up-country 'doctor', had tended so assiduously was lanky and long but otherwise not remarkable. He had come hurtling into Geoghan's little compound one afternoon with bloodshot eyes and intermittent yells and then had fallen conveniently down the saw-pit at the side of the verandah.
Geoghan got him out and pinched him carefully allover to see where he was hurt. When he pinched his knee the lascar shrieked. "Ah," said Geoghan, "Tummy-ache, eh? Is it very bad?" He pinched the knee again and this time the lascar summoned strength to spit at him.
"I don't like the look of him at all," said the doctor to his man, Mohamed Ali. "That spitting was a bad symptom; it's so unusual in lascars. We'd better take him inside."
Now Geoghan had the reputation of being mad, but of this, of course, the lascar, could know nothing, and by the time that he had spent ten days beneath the doctor's roof, drinking his soda pani and sharing his curry bat, he had formed quite a strong attachment for his protector. As lascars go he was really a very nice lascar, and after all he was little more than a boy. His name was Abdullah Jan.
His affection for Geoghan, however, was somewhat severely strained when on the eleventh day the doctor tied him securely down upon a sofa, spread a white sheet underneath him, and opened out a large, black-leather case of glittering knives.
"No," stammered Abdullah Jan, who was by profession a khalassi and could speak a little English, "Ah, no!"
"Now, don't fuss," Geoghan commanded him. "It only worries me. And I don't suppose it'll hurt much at all." He removed the splints and bandages in which he had encased the lascar's right leg, and then left the room only to return almost immediately with a large metal cash-box, which he placed upon a low table next his case of instruments. By this time Abdullah Jan was shrieking.
Geoghan tapped him smartly over the head with the butt of his twelve-bore and the shrieking ceased.
When Abdullah Jan recovered consciousness, the white sheet was smeared with blood, a strong smell of whisky filled the room, and the cash-box lay open and empty upon the floor. The injured leg had been bound up again but was hurting violently in a new place just above, and slightly on the inner side of, the knee. Geoghan was rinsing his knives.
"Good boy," said the doctor, looking up and eyeing his patient. "Feel comfy?"
The lascar's eyes goggled with the intensity of feelings he was unable to express, and presently a low but vicious grunting sound issued from his throat. When Geoghan, to silence him, stuffed some bandage in his mouth, Abdullah Jan tried to bite.
The doctor then took a seat by the side of the couch, poured himself out another glass of whisky, and began to chat.
He told the lascar boy that in about a month his knee would be so well that he could take to sea again, supposing, of course, that the private reasons which had impelled him so forcibly up country had by that time ceased to operate. It would be necessary, however, for Abdullah Jan to get his leg overhauled on arrival in London, and to that end Geoghan himself would give him the address of a competent surgeon to whom in addition he had already posted an explanatory note.
When the doctor had told his patient all this, he told it him again, and as soon as the second recital was completed, he recommenced a third time, more earnestly and in a slightly higher key, but if anything rather less distinctly. Before each repetition he swallowed a glass of whisky, and at the end of the ninth his throat became so hoarse that he desisted and suffered Mohamed to carry him to bed. Abdullah Jan remained strapped to the couch.
During the next fortnight the lascar boy's arms were kept tied together behind his back lest he should scratch the healing wound, and each day Geoghan would sit beside him and chant his original remarks, to which, however, he made from time to time additions in order to sustain the interest.
But through all the ravings of the whisky-sodden little maniac there ran as a constant burden or refrain a single theme – the visit which the lascar must one day pay to that surgeon far away in London. "Don't you let any lousy sea-cook of a ship's doctor start his monkeying with you, Abdullah my boy," he would shout with his yellow eyes aflare. "That knee of yours is jadu. Get me! There's a bad spirit in it, and there's only one man in the world can take it out, and that's my old chum, Freddy Shaw." Now Mohammed was unable effectively to act as an interpreter, and owing to Geoghan's comparative ignorance of the bat and his patient's slight acquaintance with English the communication of ideas was a lengthy process, but the constant iteration took effect at last, and when one night Abdullah Jan developed a raging fever and approached so nigh unto the gates of death that he shouted Shaw's address in his delirium, the doctor could hardly contain himself for joy.
In a couple of days Geoghan's protege was out of the fever and a week later was so much better that he was able to lie still and roll his eyes appreciatively when Mohammed and his master knelt by his couch and proceeded to unbind his arms.
When the lascar's hands were free, the doctor placed in them with much solemnity a two-foot manilla envelope sealed with green wax and decorated with pink ribbon. Inside this envelope, said Geoghan, was a letter of recommendation which would secure for his patient a berth on the Burmah Queen at Rangoon. He further observed that as the s
hip was not due to sail till the year after next, Abdullah Jan would have ample time to bid a affectionate farewell to his unmarried aunts and then to proceed down river in a sardine-tin which would be lent him for the purpose.
To these remarks Abdullah Jan made no effective response, but as soon as Geoghan, who had sat up all night drinking whiskey, staggered out of the room to fetch some more, a faint and anticipatory smile flickered for an instant about his face.
He waited until Mohammed had withdrawn to superintend the cooking of the midday rice, and then, turning the key upon him as softly as he could and cautiously removing from its hook upon the wall a long and ugly-looking kris, limped silently after his benefactor with the weapon in his hand.
Now Geoghan, when the lascar came upon him, was bent low over a demijohn at the end of a narrow passage, and was so intent upon his work that until the kris entered between his legs he was completely unaware of Abdullah Jan's designs. As the knife travelled up his body, however, in a course roughly parallel to his spine, he uttered shriek upon shriek, and it was not until the point of the long spear issued at last through his mouth in a sudden froth of blood that the appalling outcry ceased and with a final convulsive shudder he lay still.
Abdullah Jan, who had no quarrel with Mohamed, then fled from the house as quickly as his lameness would allow, and by the time that the first buzzing machar had settled upon Geoghan's corpse had already placed some two hundred yards or more of tangled forest between the little compound and himself.
Presently, being satisfied that his escape had been made good, he sat down in a little thicket, and, glancing downwards at his injured leg, suffered himself to weep a little.
Suddenly his sobs ended in a gulp of terror and dismay. A sharp, throbbing pain twisted his features into a grimace and by a strange instinct of fear he covered his knee with both hands, dreading to look upon the wound.
Before long the throbbing grew less violent, and then Abdullah Jan became able to take note of a new and appalling characteristic in the discomfort which it still produced. The pain was round, perfectly round, with a complete and superlative roundness such as he could never have imagined.
Trembling, he removed his hands and gazed. Above the right knee and on the inner side of the leg was a raised area of livid flesh, and its outline was as absolutely, as consummately circular as is the edge of a rupee newly minted or the full moon on a chilly night.
Gasping in mingled anguish and affright, the lascar struggled to his feet and cast himself once more into the shadows of the forest with a wild and reverberating yell.
* * *
Three months later a seedy, troubled man in a worn solano suit sat swinging his legs at a desk in a little freeboard shanty somewhere on the coast near Chittagong.
He was Lloyd's Agent, and behind him, also at a desk, sat the other seedy, troubled man who acted as his clerk.
"Talking," said the Agent, "of ocean mysteries and all that, it's my belief, Watkins, that they come in waves, if you get me, like an epidemic."
"Yes, Fellowes, I quite agree with you," said the clerk, who was much too tired to be brilliant.
"Look at all these mysterious disappearances of ships. Quite a crop of 'em. No less than six in half as many months, and all more or less in the same place. Let's see, there was the Bombay Star, the Ocean Queen, and the Josiah C. Pratt – no, I'm wrong, I should say the Leonidas – and two or three more. The Mohican,she was the first, I think."
"No," said Mr. Watkins with a weary shudder. "The old Rosy Dawn was the first. I remember it because of that mad lascar fellow out of the jungle who was so keen on signing out for England. No skipper would have him because of his gammy leg."
"What happened to him?" inquired Fellowes languidly.
"I think he got aboard at last as a stowaway. Carfax, skipper of the Mighty Hurry, met the Rosy Dawn one day out and told me something about it when he dropped in the other day."
"You intrigue me, Watkins," said the Agent, displaying animation, "even to the point of giving me an idea about it. There was that rummy signal from the Leonidas off the Maldives – the last we ever heard of her. Surely you haven't forgotten. Said they'd sighted a ship to the nor'ard – on fire. Only managed to save one lascar raving mad. Didn't give his name. Pity, that. I wonder if he was the same Johnny. Might have a mania for setting fire to things, you know."
"I wonder," said Mr. Watkins. The Agent yawned and swung his legs again.
* * *
Once more the scene changes, and to the jungles of Bengal and the lonely Agency near Chittagong succeed the snowy decks and glittering brasswork of the liner Elgin City.
The strange events which took place aboard this vessel are recorded in the private log of its second mate, one Burrows, and occurred with the space of some sixteen hours, commencing with the portentous advent, and closing with the hardly less prodigious passing of a mysterious lascar, rescued under remarkable circumstances from drowning.
To this lascar, otherwise unnamed, the romantic Burrows has given a title which supplies the heading, in neat block capitals, of his five closely written pages – 'The Man with the Smoking Leg'. It was, says the second mate, on the eighteenth of May and at precisely 10 a.m. that to the incredulous and horror-stricken gaze of well nigh every soul aboard there was presented a phenomenon, a bewildering miracle, monstrous and incredible.
In a scrupulously calm sea a vessel steaming some two miles to westward of the Elgin City and bearing on flag and funnel the familiar emblem of the triple dolphin was observed to pitch and toss as if caught suddenly by a hurricane, to shoot up a huge column of smoke amidships, to burst furiously into flame and almost the next second, with a final lurch and stagger, to dip her bows beneath the water and disappear from sight. Amongst the floating wreckage that marked the scene of the catastrophe a single human form was descried a quarter of an hour later clinging to a hen-coop. It was a man – a lascar, and apparently the sole survivor.
Hoisted carefully on board he subsided in a faint, and it was then, whilst he lay prone upon the deck, that his astonished rescuers noticed the condition of his right leg. It was swollen, of an angry reddish hue, and marked about the knee with curious lines and circles.
In response to the warm brandy forced between his lips, Abdullah Jan, for it was he, presently recovered, sneezed and spoke. The interpreter who bent his head to catch the words shuddered with dismay. The prostrate man, it seemed, was beseeching them on no account to touch his leg because it smoked. A little later he broke into a sort of low, appealing, chant-like cry with a constantly repeated burden or refrain of which the import could not then be ascertained. Meanwhile it was decided that he should be got below as soon as possible on the main ground that his language and behaviour generally spread alarm and despondency amongst the crew.
They bundled him into a vacant cabin next to the second mate's, set a guard at the door, and retired to discuss the situation.
During the next few hours, says Burrows, excitement steadily increased and the wildest explanations of the morning's happenings were advanced, considered and abandoned, only to be replaced by theories more fantastic still.
Towards the evening the ship's doctor, Saville, appeared at the first saloon bar with a face exhibiting every sign of nervous strain. The curiously demented lascar, it appeared, was progressing favourably save for the unaccountable condition of his leg. So far he had stubbornly refused to speak of the foundering of his ship or to give any detail of his own escape. The words, however, which formed the burden of his constantly repeated cry had been identified at last. "It's a name," said Saville, "and an English name. He keeps on calling out for 'Freddy Shaw'..."
A little after midnight, Burrows, in his watch below was roused by sounds of singing and excited voices in the lascar's cabin. Springing from his bunk he entered hastily upon Abdullah, the interpreter and Saville.
A faint moon shone upon them through the port and showed the rescued man in a half-sitting posture. His chant-like cry had
for the moment ceased abruptly and his mouth was still agape but as Burrows closed the door behind him the singing recommenced...
Hardly three-quarters of an hour later the doctor and second mate had run whimpering and giggling from the little cabin. Only after they had swallowed a couple of stiff brandies each could they tell Willoughby, the captain, their amazing tale.
The lascar, it appears, in a state of quasi-delirium, had first narrated the entire Geoghan episode, with the exception of the murder, and then gone on to relate adventures of storm and shipwreck, fire and horror, so incredible and wild that the interpreter himself had finally been fain to stop his ears and beg him to desist. And at the end of the appalling recital, when Saville had accidentally brushed against the Leg, it had emitted authentic smoke and flame.
"If Geoghan's had a hand in it anything may happen," said the doctor. "I know him well. We were at Bart's together – qualified same day. Then, seven years ago, he went whisky mad and went to live with the man-devil people up in the jungle."
The captain was concerned as to whether the Leg had been extinguished.
"It burnt for a time, Sir," Burrows told him. "There was quite a lot of heat and flame, but it didn't seem to set anything alight. It went on burning till we sang to it."
"You sang to it?" asked Willoughby appalled. "In heaven's name, what for?"
They told him then with the utmost conviction that Geoghan had bewitched the leg and that, to calm and placate it, it was in fact necessary to sing to it, but that even this was very dangerous because the singing of the wrong song infuriated it utterly. The matter had been badly bungled on five or six ships as it was. The first two or three had fired astern and gone down with all hands; another, as they gathered, had "exploded", and the captain had himself seen what happened to the last. In each case it was remarkable that the lascar, after bringing destruction on his shipmates, had himself escaped.