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Roy Glashan's Library
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Based on a tattoo design by George Burchett (1872-1953)
Argosy, 22 August 1936, with "Spider Gold"
James Francis Dwyer
JAMES FRANCIS DWYER (1874-1952) was an Australian writer. Born in Camden Park, New South Wales, Dwyer worked as a postal assistant until he was convicted in a scheme to make fraudulent postal orders and sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1899. In prison, Dwyer began writing, and with the help of another inmate and a prison guard, had his work published in The Bulletin. After completing his sentence, he relocated to London and then New York, where he established a successful career as a writer of short stories and novels. Dwyer later moved to France, where he wrote his autobiography, Leg-Irons on Wings, in 1949. Dwyer wrote over 1,000 short stories during his career, and was the first Australian-born person to become a millionaire from writing. —Wikipedia
When the spiders walk they lead to treasure—that was the native superstition. For where the spiders walked, the natives found gold and rubies and things like that. Jan Kromhout, Dutch naturalist, was certain that his assistant, Pereira, had been taken in by such talk. Then came the night of the arachnid migration, and....
JAN KROMHOUT, the big Dutch naturalist, crouched in the patch of moonlight before his bungalow. With his powerful, bald head thrust forward, he watched a large black spider that moved in circles on the cleared space. The tremendous silence of the jungle ate up the whimperings, rustlings and patterings of small feet that came from the Dutchman's captives within the building.
The silence protested against the plaints of the imprisoned ones. It was a frightening quiet. It welled out from the jungle home of the naturalist, and made one think that a word whispered softly at Singapore, a thousand miles away across the China Sea, could be heard distinctly in that house of pain.
Kromhout plucked a strand of tough grass, made a noose in it and slipped the noose over the head of the spider. He drew it tight around the thorax of the insect, then rose to his feet. The spider, finding himself attacked, gathered his legs together and remained motionless.
The naturalist placed the insect on a rough pine-table and cleverly unloosed the encircling blade of grass. The spider did not move. He was a round black ball on the white board, held in a semi-paralyzed condition by the fear brought on by the Dutchman's attack.
"Of all living things, the spider is the most patient," said Kromhout. "Ja. He will sit without moving for a day or a week. He believes that everything comes to him who waits. Look at this fellow. He does not fear death, for he knows nothing about death, but he will stay rolled in a ball for hours till he thinks it is quite safe to get up and run away. And he will not do that while we talk.
"This fellow is of the Lycosidae, that we call the wolf spiders. They are clever fellows. They build nice trapdoor nests, and they line those holes with silk so that no sand can fall into them. And they put a hinged door on them. Do you know that a spider used a hinged door 'way back in the Carboniferous Period when man had never dreamed of a hinge?
"Man was rolling big stones in front of his cave. It is true. The spider is an old fellow in the history of the world. He is found in the Baltic amber beds of the Oligocene Age. He has lived because he is cunning and selfish, and when he is hungry he would eat his wife or his mother or his father. The female Nephila eats her husband on his honeymoon, and I do not know of any other insect or animal that is mean enough to do that. Not one.
"Are you sleepy? Nee? Then I will tell you a story of these Lycosidae. It is a queer story."
SEVEN years ago—that would be in 1929—I was
trapping at the head of the Mekong River. I had with me a
Portuguese named Pereira. He said he was a Portuguese, but when
you are nothing else in the East you can say that you are
Portuguese and no one is insulted. If you say you are English or
American when you are not, some big Englishman or big American
will snort, but no one minds you when you say you are a
Portuguese.
There was a flat stretch of dry ground near our camp and that stretch had been holed by the Lycosidae. There were hundreds and hundreds of their silk-lined burrows with their trapdoors. The top of those lids had little bits of stick and dirt glued to them so that a fool fly could not tell the difference between the lid and the rest of the ground. A fly would drop down for a little walk in the sunshine, and one of the Lycosidae would have his trapdoor propped up just a little bit, watching for fool insects. There would be a quick rush over the top by the spider, and the fly would be in the larder before he knew what had happened to him.
Sometimes a big hungry wasp would come down on that clearing. The wasp he loves a fat spider better than anything. Fruit juice and fat spiders are to the wasps what champagne and caviar are to man. The spiders would slam down their lids when a wasp came along, and if the wasp tried to lift the door they would clamp their fangs in the bottom of it and stick their legs in the wall of their burrow so that he couldn't lift it. When he got tired and went away swearing, they would peep out and watch for more flies. The spider has more brains in his head than a thousand wasps.
The natives that were near that place thought a lot of those spiders. They would not kill them. And if one of them accidentally kicked one of those trapdoors with his bare foot he would stoop down and fix it so that the spider would not be mad with him.
This Portuguese was interested in the liking of those natives for the spiders. He could talk the lingo very well, and he was always asking questions and listening to what they said to him. He would do that when there were other things that he should he doing, and he got mad.
"Kromhout," he said one day, "those people have some funny notions about spiders."
"They can keep them," I snapped. "I am not interested in spiders. I am trapping things that are bigger."
"But their stories are strange," said Pereira.
"Ja," I said. "I have heard so many strange stories in the East that I am tired of listening to them."
But I was curious to know what he had heard and I waited for him to go on.
"You know that all spiders are lucky," said Pereira. "Once I read of a king somewhere who was saved by a spider. In Ireland or Scotland or some place like that."
"I never believed that," I snapped. "The spider is the great egoist of the insect world. That is why he has lived. He has never done anything for anybody unless he has got something out of it."
"That is not what these people think," said that Portuguese. "They say that the spiders change their houses now and then, and when they move the natives follow them."
"Why?" I asked. I was a little angry with that fool Portuguese, but I wanted to hear everything that he had heard.
"Because the spiders often lead them to treasure," said Pereira. "They have hundreds of stories about these spider walks. They make sacrifices to the insects. When the spiders move they crawl over ground where the natives find gold and rubies and things like that."
"You are mad," I said. "Quite mad. The spiders might move, ja, but they have a reason. And that reason would be plain to anyone but a fool. They move because of a flood or because the wasp gets too active. I do not wish to hear any more foolishness."
That Portuguese would not listen to me. He made up with a woman of that tribe. A very nice woman. She was slim and beautiful with a skin like polished cedar and she had big dark eyes. She had a little baby, but she had no man, and that Portuguese spent a lot of time comforting her and listening to her stories. He was spider mad, was that fellow. He could not think of anything else.
The stories that the woman told him got into his silly head and he became a little crazy. Spiders, spiders, all the damn time with him. The woman saw that he was hungry for that stuff and she fed it to him. Ja, she fed him buckets of it.
He would come chattering to me with the yarns that she told him, the fool eyes of him popping out of his head. I was so sick of his talk that I had a desire to knock him down. He was only a Portuguese, but it made me angry to see a man who had a little white blood in his veins making a fool of himself.
"They will move soon, Kromhout!" he said one day. "She says so. They are watching them."
"Ja, they will move because the mason-wasps are about," I cried. "That is the only reason they will shift."
"It is not a question of the wasps," said Pereira. "You don't understand. It is a matter of the moon and the sacrifices that are made. You are so full of stuff that you have read in books that you know nothing about things like this."
"I know enough to shut my ears to a wench who wants to trap me," I snapped.
Pereira got mad when I said that. "She loves me," he snorted. "She would do anything for me."
I did not answer him then. I thought him a fool. I knew that there was a chance that the spiders would move, but I knew there was nothing in that silly talk about treasure. Those natives knew nothing about the hunger of wasps and hornets and how they work to feed their grubs. They are good parents, those wasps. Have you seen them pounce on flies, pull off their legs and wings and carry them off to their little ones? A? Well, there were very few flies around that place, but there were lots of those spiders, and the big wasps, the Masaris vespiformis, do not like to let their little ones go hungry. They are great foragers, those fellows.
I watched Pereira talking to that nice girl with the baby. She brought him all the news. She was very pretty, was that girl. The two of them would sit together for hours, the girl whispering to him and he listening.
It was the beginning of the hot season. There were lots of wasps about, and I was not surprised when Pereira told me that the natives thought the spiders were going to shift camp.
"They think they will move in a day or two," he said.
"Perhaps," I said. I thought Pereira was insane. I looked at a big wasp that was out scavenging for food for his grubs. He was trying to pull the lid off one of those spider holes. Lots of those spiders had their doors shut tight to show they were not receiving visitors. They knew about those greedy grubs in the wasp nests. They eat a lot, those grubs They are gourmands.
JAN KROMHOUT paused in the telling and looked at the dark ball
made by the spider that he had captured. The silence closed in as
the Dutchman's heavy voice was momentarily hushed. The
Lycosidae was aware of the stillness. Tentatively he put
out his legs with the intention of making a rush for cover, but
Kromhout coughed slightly and the insect was again a round ball
of fear.
"He does not like my voice," said the naturalist. "It buzzes against his skin and brings him all sorts of fears. It makes him think of wasps."
THIS fellow Pereira—the doctor continued the
story— spoke to me about the girl that had the nice dark
red skin. He said he liked her a lot, but that did not please me.
Pereira was working for me. I had spent money on getting that
fool up from the coast and I did not like to think of him running
into the jungle with a native woman. Not till he had worked off
what he owed me.
I spoke fiercely to him. "If you run off with her I will break your back," I said to him. "I have listened to a lot of nonsense from you, and I am sick of your talk. Do your work and shut up."
That same night there was a full moon. It popped up over the black stretch of jungle and stared at that place as if it had never seen it before. And it brought a loneliness that made me long for Amsterdam.
I saw some dark figures down on the clearing. I looked in Pereira's tent, but he was not there. I thought he was with that girl, and I was angry. I told myself that I had made a big mistake in picking that fellow. It is foolish to pick a man in the East who calls himself a Portuguese, but when I was starting up the Mekong there was no one else to pick.
About midnight I took a big drink of schnapps and went to bed. I pushed that fool out of my mind and got to sleep, and I was just dreaming a nice dream about Kalver Straat and the Leidsche Plein when that idiot grabbed my shoulder and shook me.
"What is it?" I snapped.
"The spiders, Kromhout!" he cried. "The spiders!"
"What about them?" I asked.
"They're moving!" screamed Pereira. "Come and look! Quick!"
I pulled on my clothes and hurried over to where five score natives were gathered in a circle. They were squatting on their haunches, their eyes on the stretch of flat ground where the Lycosidae had their nests. The moonlight was so strong that you could see a mosquito twenty yards away.
That fool Pereira had told the truth. Ja; those spiders were moving. It was strange. They were popping out of their holes one after the other, and forming a line that stretched across the clearing. There were scores and scores of them. While the old Masaris vespiformis were snoring in their nests, thinking of the fine big spiders they would catch next day, those same spiders were making a silent retreat from the battlefield.
Do not ask me how they had fixed it up so that they would all leave together. The animals and the insects can do things like that. They do not put out any signs to say they are moving on, but when the minute comes they are all packed up and ready. Ja, even the females. I and thousands of others have puzzled our heads over it.
The big wasps did not know that those fat spiders were packing. Spiders are clever. Very clever. It takes great intelligence to live through thousands and thousands of years. The big animals couldn't do it The mammoth and the diplodocus and the big Mesozoic reptiles have been wiped out because they did not have the fine intelligence of the spiders.
Those natives were watching and not making a sound. Crouched down on their heels. So silent they were they did not seem to breathe. And with that fool Pereira was the woman with the nice skin, her eyes ablaze with excitement, her skin shining in the moonlight like tinted silk. She was very pretty.
When the last of those spiders came hurrying out of his hole the line moved off. Up the slope and away from the bank where the mason-wasps had built some homes. In the moonlight their march looked like a long black piece of rope moving across the bare ground. Sometimes the line broke, but they closed up very quickly. It was good marching. Very good. But it was a little chilling to the spine. Ja. They were so black and so clever and the hour was funny. It was after midnight, and with that big bald-faced moon I could understand the effect it would have upon those natives.
When the spiders got a little start the holy man of that tribe mumbled a few words. The natives dropped on their hands and knees, dipped their fingers in a calabash that the shaman offered, then, keeping in a line, they started to crawl after the spiders. And as they went they scratched with their nails at the ground the spiders had passed over!
Scratched like furies. With their fingernails that were wet with the stuff from the calabash. And the holy man went up and down the line giving them a fresh dip when their finger tips were dry. A fresh dip in the bowl. Do you know what was in it? It was blood. Blood of a sacrifice. It is an old business. An offering to the earth devils that guard the treasures of the ground.
I looked at Pereira. That damn fool was on his hands and knees like the natives. And he was scratching. Scratching like a wildcat. And his fingers were wet. Wet so that I could see the moistened earth where he was clawing.
I did not like that. He was a little white. Not much, perhaps, but some. I went over to him and pulled him to his feet.
"It is not nice to do that!" I said.
"Leave me alone!" he cried. "Mind your own business!"
I was mad with temper. He was making a fool of himself before all those natives. I struck him with the back of my hand and he kicked at me and swore like the devil. "There is a reason!" he screamed, and he dropped hack into the line alongside the pretty girl. That girl was amused because that fool kicked at me.
That was a weird business. It made me a little sick. The wavy line of scurrying spiders, so plain in the moonlight, and the crawling natives following them on hands and knees, scratching the ground with their fingers. Ach, it was not nice. Not nice at all. It made my stomach turn over. I had a desire to kill Pereira.
I wanted to go back to my tent, but I couldn't. Do you understand? That business had invisible hands that came out and held me. It touched some memories that were buried deep in my subconscious brain. It did so. Not nice memories. They were of dark doings in jungles when we were crawling out of the husk of barbarism. I had no idea that they were in my head, but that line of hurrying spiders and the creeping natives eager to wet their fingers in the calabash of blood brought them out. Ja, brought them out like some acid would bring out a print that the eye could not see.
That fellow Pereira was completely crazy. His eyes always stuck out a lot, but they were nearly out of his head at that moment. And his big mouth was open, with his tongue lolling. The black blood that was In him had come to the surface. You bet. He was the same as those natives. Possibly worse, because of a lot of things that he had choked back when thinking himself a white man took possession of him then.
The spiders were heading up a slope towards a stony stretch of ground. I think those natives did not wish them to go there. It was harder scratching. The holy man started a chant, and all the scratches joined in. Pereira and the girl singing louder than the rest.
I was a little mad then I had spent money on that Portuguese. Much money. I ran over to where he was in the line and I grabbed him by the shoulder. "You damn idiot!" I yelled. "If you don't stop I will break your neck!"
He turned and clawed at me with his fingers. His wet fingers. I was sick then in earnest. Sick and mad. I shut my fist and knocked him down.
A bunch of those fools jumped on me and pulled me away from Pereira. I was so mad that I wanted to kill him. That business was making me afraid. Ja, afraid. There was, at the very back of my brain, a desire. A little desire. It was ten thousand miles away, but it was growing. It was growing with each minute that passed. Do you know what it was? Neen, you do not? It was a desire to do what Pereira was doing!
It seems curious now when I think of it. I try to tell myself that it was not there, but I know. I know that it was. A desire to get down on my hands and knees, dip my fingers in the calabash, and scratch in the ground that the spiders had crawled over!
Sometimes I am ashamed to tell of that desire. In the sunlight I could not confess. And I would not speak of it in places where there are many men. But in the nights like this when the jungle is around me and when there is a silence like a great confessional I am not afraid to tell of it.
It was me. A part of me that had been covered up with the memories of hundreds of years, and that business brought it out. Brought it out so that a terror seized me. A sticky terror that made me pray.
I am not much of a person for prayers. When I was little I went to the Oude Kerk at Amsterdam, but that was thirty years before that night at the headwaters of the Mekong. Thirty years and a little bit. Yet those prayers that I had learned came back to me when the terror clutched me. Came back with a rush. I started to mouth them as I watched the mumbo-jumbo business of those natives. I said them aloud. I screamed them! Ja, ja, I screamed them so that they rose louder than the chanting of those crawling natives. I forgot that fool Pereira. I was not thinking of saving him. I was thinking only of myself. Of Jan Kromhout.
Those prayers gave me strength. Strength to pull my face away from that business. Strength to turn and run. Full speed I raced back to my tent. I closed the flap of it to shut out the walling of those people, then I dropped on my knees and told the Lord how small I was. How very small I was. I was sweating like a frightened mule, and my teeth were chattering.
I DID not sleep. I lay there and prayed. A thousand times I
have brought that night up before my eyes to ask myself what was
wrong with me. Why the terror seized me. Why I was afraid that I
might act like Pereira. I have no explanation but this. I think
that in the very black cells of the mind we have imprisoned
certain desires, terrible desires that we have managed to lock up
with the keys that religion and civilization have given us, and
that now and then those desires make an attempt to escape.
Do you understand? They are of things that man did when the world was young. Bad things. Witchcraft and devil-worship, vampire stuff and all the hocus-pocus of the dark years. They are all in the little cells that have come down to us. They are our terrible prisoners that the Almighty has given us the power to tie up. But we must watch them always and always. Watch them well.
Pereira was not there when the blessed sunlight came. He had cleared out with that girl that had a skin like polished cedar. But there was a note from him and a little packet. In the packet were three gold coins. Ja. Three gold coins that were minted by the Kushans who founded a great empire in North-West India one hundred years before the birth of Christ. Their great king was Kanishka, and his picture was on those pieces of gold. If some day you visit the Amstelkring Museum at Oudezyds Voorburgwal you will see those coins. They are there. And there is a little card with my name. That card says that I presented the coins to the museum, but it does not tell how they came to me. You could not make the curator of that Armstelkring Museum believe what I have told to you. He has never been in the East, and if you have not been in the East you are suspicious of stories like mine. Yes, very suspicious indeed.
PEREIRA wrote in the note that he had scratched up those gold
pieces and was giving them to me to compensate me for the money I
had lost in bringing him there. He had found fifty pieces. Then
he wrote something that startled me. He said the girl had made a
great sacrifice for him. A terrible sacrifice. She had not the
little baby any more. The little baby!
I was sick when I read that. I rushed down to the native village and saw the holy man who had carried the calabash. I intended to kill that old scoundrel if Pereira's story was true. When I questioned him he grinned. He took me to a hut and showed me the baby. Ja, alive and well. He was amused. The blood in the calabash was the blood of a rooster, but that girl was clever. She had told a fine story to Pereira, and Pereira believed. Women are clever in getting the men they want. Very clever indeed.
JAN KROMHOUT was silent. The jungle waited, ready to pounce
upon the slightest noise and smother it with the enormous blanket
of quiet. The Lycosidae on the pine table stretched out a
leg, followed it with another and another. Slowly he got upon his
feet, then with what one might call spider-tiptoeing he crawled
across the table and descended to the ground. Jan Kromhout did
not notice him. Kromhout was thinking of the night in the long
ago when the prisoners in the cells of his subconscious brain
tried to escape.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.