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“Spiders,” he said, looking at us thoughtfully, “but couldn’t you just stamp on them, or something?”
We explained that they attacked in packs.
“All the same,” he said, “surely you could have rigged up some kind of flame thrower. That ought to sizzle them up nicely.”
We agreed that it had been mooted, and that it would have had a limited use, in favourable circumstances, and we went on to explain the plan for a fire-line to check their advance, but that that would be only a temporary measure.
What, in fact, we failed entirely to convey was the scale of the infestation. It is so difficult to use the word millions without being thought to exaggerate; and advisable, we found, to eschew the word billions altogether. He obviously took our declaration that the spiders had wiped out every living creature in the parts they had overrun, to mean merely that we had not seen any other creatures.
The interview ended with him telling us:
“I am afraid you will have to stay here until I get instructions concerning you. We will try to make you as comfortable as we can.”
“Well,” said Camilla, as the door shut behind us, “there you have us. Two people who have undoubtedly been through a very trying experience which has left them slightly off their rockers.”
His report must, however, have carried weight in some quarters, for five days later a team of four investigators flew in. One was from the Colonial Office; another a naturalist; the third, a photographer; the other, as far as I could gather, was inquiring on Lord Foxfield’s behalf. They asked us a lot of questions, and treated our replies with reserve.
The following day their plane took us all to Tanakuatua, and I had my first aerial view of the island. It was the impressive way to see it. The sight of half the island tented over with its covering of web had a marked effect on our companions. Their manner towards us noticeably changed.
When we landed from a dinghy, all duly sprayed and protected, I led three of them to the encampment while Camilla and the naturalist went off along the beach, both of them slung about with specimen boxes.
At the encampment I paused, indicated the entrance and watched my three go in under the tarpaulin. I had no intention of going in there again myself. I stood outside waiting for them while one band of spiders after another ran knee-high up my legs before dropping off. Presently they came out again, all looking pretty sick.
Then I took them up to the settlement site. The spiders had got across our protective strip, and were now clustered all round, and all over, our spider-proofed building, stirring and glistening as they waited there. We stood watching them for some moments.
The Colonial Office man said, uneasily:
“It’s almost as if they think there’s something – or someone – in there that they want…I suppose there’s no chance…?”
We went closer, and dispersed those round the doorway with the spray. There was, of course, no one inside the building – and no spiders, either.
“All the same, you were taking refuge in there…” the same man said. He shook his head. “I’ve seen enough of this place. I’m ready to go back now.”
“You may be,” said the photographer, “but what we’ve got to do is convince the people back home. Not an easy job with the unsupported word – as I am sure Mr Delgrange will agree.”
He hitched the large black box he carried slung over one shoulder, round to his front and started selecting cameras and lenses from it. We watched him taking movies and stills for half an hour, until we got tired of it, then we retreated to the dinghy, the only open-air spider-free place to be found, and sat there smoking and watching bands of spiders patrol the beach while we waited.
“It looks to me,” said Lord Foxfield’s man, “as if there’s only one thing to be done with this place. Spray it from the air with the strongest damned insecticide there is – every square foot of it.”
The Colonial Office man shook his head.
“No good. It’d just lie on top of that canopy of web,” he decided.
“Well, wait till a gale strips that off, and then do it,” said the other.
“You’d not get them under the leaves even then. They’d sit it out,” the Colonial Office man told him. “No, the only thing is a good dose of napalm on the windward side, when there is a good wind. Burn off the whole bloody place.”
“If it would ignite,” said the first. “They’ve used napalm in jungles without burning them off.”
“Or what about just leaving them alone to work it out. After all, it stands to reason that any form of society having to depend exclusively on cannibalism must outgrow its food supply in the end.”
“We’ve been over all that,” I put in, and advanced Camilla’s theory of the spiders learning to catch fish. “Besides,” I added, “the longer they exist, the more the chance of their spreading.” We were still discussing ways of dealing with them when the photographer joined us. He seemed pleased with himself.
“Now I just want one sequence showing how they attack a human being. Would one of you gentlemen oblige,” he requested.
Camilla and the naturalist came back along the beach, deep in conversation, about an hour later. The reserve with which he had treated both of us had altogether thawed. He handled the boxes they were carrying with great care.
“What have you got in there?” asked the Colonial Office man suspiciously. “Not…?”
“Yes. The evidence,” Camilla told him, lifting the lid. He recoiled, and then saw that the top was still covered by a wire gauze. He looked in cautiously at the milling mass of spiders. “The Little Sisters – provisionally named Araneus Nokikii,” said Camilla.
We, and the four investigators, left Oahomu the following day, and flew home via Honolulu and San Francisco.
Two days after we landed we were ushered into the presence of Lord Foxfield, to give him our account of the events on Tanakuatua.
He was quite put out. From time to time he punctuated our story with exclamations: “Tch-tch!” “Most unfortunate!” “Most regrettable!” and occasionally went as far as to concede: “Terrible!”
“But surely,” he said in a puzzled way when we had ended, “surely in spite of all the difficulties there were steps that could have been taken to avert this tragedy?”
“Possibly,” suggested Camilla, “we were not quite enough like gods to take them.”
Our interview ended on a different note.
“I shall be instructing my solicitors to bring an action,” he told us. “It is clear that this species of spider came into existence as a direct result of a mutation caused by the radioactive contamination of a part of Tanakuatua. The ‘clean’ certificate which was a condition of purchase stated the existing level of radiation – and, no doubt, stated it correctly – but it also implied that the island was free from the effects of radiation, or such was the inference that a reasonable man might be expected to draw. In effect, then, the seller misrepresented the condition of the island to the purchaser, for the effect of the radiation was to render Tanakuatua uninhabitable, and therefore worthless to the purchaser.
“When the hearing takes place you will of course, both be called as key witnesses.”
Naturally enough, we never were called.
Owing to some political sensation at the time, the whole Tanakuatua affair had received remarkably little publicity, and the Government had no desire to put it under the limelight. The case was settled out of court. His Lordship’s purchase money was refunded, he was reimbursed for the cost of the expedition, compensation was paid to close relatives of the deceased, a gesture made towards ourselves, and, for what, all in all, amounted to a tidy charge upon the public funds, the Government found itself once more the embarrassed owner of Tanakuatua.
Just what steps were taken to rid the island of the Little Sisters I have been unable to find out, but the whole matter has been rendered academic by the Tanakuatuan eruption.
There was, it may be recalled, some preliminary confusion over t
hat, due to the announcement of volcanic activity there being so quickly succeeded by reports from Moscow, Tokyo, and San Francisco of the low-level detonation of a fusion-bomb at approximately the same time and place. These mistakes were, of course, satisfactorily cleared up by official announcements, which added that a survey flight undertaken after the eruption had shown Tanakuatua, which was fortunately an uninhabited island, to be now devoid of any signs of life.
I still hear occasionally from Camilla, who seems to get about the world quite a lot. Mostly, her communications take the form of clippings from obscure local newspapers which, when I manage to get them translated, invariably deal with deaths attributed to spider bites.
But the latest was different. It was a small box, posted from somewhere in Peru. Inside, floating in a bottle of spirit, was a specimen which I had no doubt in identifying – and I ought to know – as a Little Sister – Araneus Nokikii.
Well, well…Time, I suppose, will show…
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