Amazing Stories, Vol. 3, No. 2 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Tie OCTOPUS CYCLE by Irvin Lester and Flefcher Pralf =O aeatLERE was a long, uneasy swell on the sur- ) Ge) face of the Indian Ocean as though some- aa oN one were gently rocking the floor beneath 2 EO it, and a hot, moist wind blew against the face of Walter Weyl, A.B., A.M., B.Sc., as he stood against the rail of the pudgy little Mes- sagéres Maritimes steamer, wondering whether he would dare to chance a spell of seasickness by lighting a well-cured pipe for the fourth time that afternoon. It was hot—and off to the west, Tamatave’s houses gleamed white and blistering against the green back- ground of the Madagascar jungle, blued by the dis- tance. Away to the north the coastline stretched ilimitable. It would be another. day at least before the steamer arrived at Andovorata, and Walter Weyl, A.B., A.M., B.Sc., would be able to get at the heart of the mysterious occurrences that had brought hiin there. His mind traveled back to the letter from his friend of college days, Raoul Duperret, now on French gov- ernment service in that mysterious land—Madagascar. He saw it again before him, the characteristic French handwriting, the precise French phrasing: “...alas, we cannot. pursue these investigations, through lack of money. To you, then, my friend, I appeal. To you belongs, permit me to say; that combi- nation so rare of the talent for scientific investigation and the means to pursue it. To you also will appertain the credit for any discovery. “Let me, in detail, tell you of what we know. Diouma-Mbobo is a chief- tain of the blacks in the southern part of the island, who have never been res- cued from cannibal prac- tices. He is, as far as we know,’ a man who rules by law and is of a truthfulness. Thus, when he accused the = but they are facts. ger of losing our grip on the natives, for we cannot at all explain these disappearances nor prevent them. The commandant says, ‘Send a battalion of chasseurs,’ but it is my belief that a battalion of chausseurs would like- wise fail, and I send for you, for I believe the agency that destroys men thus is not human. No human would neglect the rifles. _ “As you know, Madagascar is a country apart. We have here the giant spiders, large as bats; the lizards, large as sheep, and no, not a single snake, All our ani- mals are outré, impossible even, and what if one more impossible than all. ..? And thus it is to you, my rich American friend, I appeal for myself and my country.” It had offered precious little real information, that letter, but enough to have caused Walter Weyl to drop a learned monograph on the ammonites of the Upper Cretaceous and hurry across ten thousand miles of ocean with microscopes, rifles and all the equipment of _ the modern scientist, to the aid of his friend. _The sun went down suddenly, as it does in the tropics, and the sea was purple darkness all at once. The lights of Tamatave twinkled away behind and were blotted out; off to the west was only the menacing blot of the huge island, forbidding and dangerous in the gloom. Weyl sat musing by the rail, listening to the hushed voices of a couple of men in the bows. : Forgetting his dinner be- Dg eee again, is a different story, a thriller that you cwill remember for many years to come. And that you may not shout at once “impossible,” we are printing in this issue an actual photograph of one of these sea creatures, which comes preity close.to what our authors have in mind, except that they do not roam on land, but. keep strictly to the sea. As Curator Dr. Ditmars, of the Bronx Zoological Gardens, pointed out recently, nature is always far more surprising than fiction. For instance, there are really fish that climb irees, unpossible as this sounds, and they do exist now in India; also there are snakes that can fly from one tree to another. These things may sound impossible and fictional, low, he fell into a half-doze, from which he was sud- denly awakened by a sense of approaching evil, defi- nite, yet which could not be located. He looked about lazily. The Southern Cross hung brilliant in the sky; there was no other licht but the flare of portholes on the water, and no sound but the slap of waves against Tanosy, who are the next - tribe to him, of stealing people and eating them, we took measures and did not too much believe the denials of the Tanésy. But Diouma-Mbobo’s people continue to disappear, and when the commandant sent a whole company of Senegalese to preserve order, they still disappeared. What is still more distressing, is that some of the Senegalese also disappeared, and save but a solitary rifle or two found in the jungle, no trace of them remains. ‘ » “There is some fear in the island and we are in dan- the bows. Yet the night had suddenly become dreadful. He. struggled lazily to put a name to the sense of im- pending doom, and as he struggled there was a sudden and terrible scream from the bow—the cry of a man in mortal anguish and fear. _ Oh—o—o—u—” it went, running off into a stran- gled sob, and through it cut the shout of the other sailor, “Secours! Secours! Ferent.. .” and the sound of a blow on soft flesh. Weyl leaped to his feet and ran forward; there was the sound of a slamming door, and a quick patter of 110 conmicldboolkks.conn