Web Page 9

  “Yes. He’s dead,” she confirmed, and continued to examine the vivid face with great attention.

  Jennifer turned away.

  “If you hadn’t been so keen to know what that misty stuff is…” she began, and left the sentence unfinished.

  “If David hadn’t gone to find out, we might all be like that,” Camilla replied.

  She looked across the beach. Most of the brown patches had become static, though one or two still drifted slowly and aimlessly back from the water’s edge.

  Jamie turned his attention to the engine.

  “We’d best take him back,” he said, and pressed the starter.

  Camilla sat looking at the cliffs and the mist-topped trees that crowned them, with a frown of concentration as we drew off. The frown was still there when we were in the open sea, making our way back down the coast. I offered her a cigarette. She took it and lit it absent-mindedly. Not until she had finished it and thrown the end over the side did she break her thoughts. Then it was to say:

  “I don’t understand – I simply don’t understand it.”

  “We ought to be able to get a specimen some way or other,” I said.

  She looked at me blankly.

  “A specimen of the misty stuff,” I explained.

  “Oh, that,” she said.

  “Well, I thought that was what you wanted…”

  “Oh, I know what that is.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a web – just spiders’ web.”

  I turned and looked at the coast. At the misty white tegument that covered the trees. I boggled at the thought.

  “But that’s impossible. All that web. It’d take billions, quadrillions of spiders…No, I can’t believe it…It’s inconceivable…”

  “Nevertheless, it’s true,” she said. She reached down beside her, picked up the rolled handkerchief and unfastened it carefully.

  “There they are. They’re the cause of it,” she told me.

  I looked at the contents of the handkerchief. Half a dozen spiders, all with their legs clenched tightly about them in death. With a finger she turned one over so that I could see its back.

  It was not a large spider – certainly not for what the tropics can show. The body was just about an inch long. The marking was a pattern of dark brown on a ground of russet brown. It looked a very harmless creature.

  I raised my eyes to the cliff-top again, and shook my head. “I can’t believe it,” I repeated.

  “That’s what’s done it – unless there’s another kind, too,” Camilla assured me. “Certainly this is what got David.”

  I stared at the thing. I had heard of poisonous spiders, of course, but I had imagined them to be large, hairy-legged creatures, far larger than this. I still could not believe it.

  “What sort of spider is it?” I asked her.

  She shrugged.

  “They’re rather a specialized study. It is an adult, female. Class: Arachnida. Order: Araneae. Sub-order: Araneomorphae. In other words it is a true spider.”

  “So I judged,” I said.

  “I can’t say more,” she told me. “I daresay it has a name. But as there are six hundred kinds of spiders in England alone, and heaven knows how many kinds in these parts, positive identification is asking a bit much. It needs a specialist, as I said. All I can tell you is that structurally it appears to be just a normal spider. I’ll have a look at it under the microscope when we get back.”

  “But it is poisonous? You know that?” I insisted.

  “All the Araneae are poisonous,” she said. “Whether they are harmful to us depends on whether they are strong enough to puncture our skins, the nature of the poison they inject, and the quantity of it.”

  Jennifer had joined us, and was peering down at the spiders in Camilla’s handkerchief with horrified fascination.

  “These must be very poisonous indeed – like the black widow or the tarantula,” she said, with a shudder.

  “I shouldn’t think so – or they’d be just as notorious, even though the tarantula is mostly a myth,” Camilla told her.

  “I thought from what you told us that insects and pests are your speciality,” Jennifer said.

  “They are,” Camilla agreed calmly. “But spiders aren’t insects – though some forms can be pests. The rest are, as I said, out of my field.” She looked down at the dead spiders again. “All the same I’d guess that a bite from one of these, since they can puncture the skin, might itch and swell a bit – but wouldn’t be likely to have much more effect than that.”

  “Except that they killed David,” Jennifer said bitterly.

  “Exactly. The effect of two or three hundred bites injecting poison at approximately the same time would, of course, be very different. That’s what I don’t understand,” Camilla replied, with a shake of her head.

  She unscrewed one of the object-lenses of the field-glasses, and used it to examine one of the spiders more closely. After some moments she said:

  “Nothing exotic about it. Eight eyes, strong chelicerae – as you’d expect, to bite through human skin – six spinnerets. In fact, as far as appearance goes, a very ordinary spider indeed.” She continued to look at it, thoughtfully. “The reason I know so little about spiders is that the Araneae are not pests. If they were, they’d have been studied a lot more than they have. They’re seldom harmful, we haven’t found any use for them, with the result that only a few specialists have taken much interest in them. In the normal way their lives and ours scarcely impinge. Fortunately they do kill vast quantities of insects which would otherwise become pests, but apart from that we might be living in different worlds. They go their way and we go ours, and mostly we interfere with one another only by accident. Almost perfect coexistence – that’s what makes this so strange…”

  “Insects,” I said, reminded. “Yes, there aren’t many, are there? I expected an island in these parts to be swarming with them.”

  “And I expected far more flowers,” Jennifer put in. “But if there aren’t the insects to fertilize them…”

  “And I am beginning to have a pretty good idea what has happened to the birds,” said Camilla.

  Five

  I had hoped to get ashore quietly and ask Walter’s or Charles’s advice on dealing with David’s body, but there turned out to be no chance of that. Several people who were idling around the encampment saw us approaching and came down to greet us, so there was no hiding it. We sent one of them back for a blanket to cover the body, then we carried it up and laid it in one of the bags among the cases. Then Jamie and I went in search of Walter. We discovered him and Charles together in a tent which had been put up at the site to act as an office, at work on a drainage plan. They received our news incredulously, and came to see for themselves.

  “Spiders!” exclaimed Walter. “It’s unbelievable. What kind of spiders?”

  We explained that Camilla had the specimens. Presently we discovered her under a tarpaulin awning where she had set up a microscope on a table, and was intently examining one of the spiders through it.

  “I can’t find anything unusual,” she told us. “It has all the looks of a perfectly normal type – though I can’t identify it. There are too many kinds. I’ll try to dissect one if I can – it’s a very tricky job. But I’ll be surprised if there’s anything to be found – I mean, abnormally developed poison glands, or anything of that kind. I think it’s just the numbers of them that made it fatal.”

  “There were a lot of them?” asked Walter.

  “They seemed to drop on him in a mass – impossible to say how many,” Camilla said.

  “There must have been several hundreds in each of those groups on the beach,” I put in. “Though of course we didn’t know what they were then – they simply looked like moving brown patches.”

  “You think there’s an infestation of them round there?” Walter asked.

  “Infestation is a mild word for it,” Camilla told him. “You remember those patches of mist you
reported seeing?” She reminded him, and went on to tell of the quantities of web we had seen from the sea. “And we’ve no idea how far inland it covers,” she concluded.

  Walter looked down at the three or four dead spiders lying on the table.

  “It seems impossible. I never heard of spiders behaving in such a way,” he said.

  “That is what is troubling me,” Camilla told him. “Spiders definitely don’t behave like that. There is a class known as hunting spiders, but they certainly don’t hunt in packs. In fact, spiders don’t do anything in packs…”

  Walter remained thoughtful for some moments, then an anxious expression came over his face.

  “The exploring party hasn’t returned yet,” he said, uneasily.

  There was still no sign of the exploring party when the sun went down.

  An air of apprehension hung over the whole encampment. Joe Shuttleshaw was the most restless. From time to time he would walk along the beach to the point where the party had started hacking its way along one of the overgrown tracks. There he would put his hands to his mouth, and call at the top of his voice. Then he would pause and listen, as we all listened, for an answering call. None came. He’d try again, with no more result. Then he’d trudge back and sit down beside his wife, biting at his fingernails.

  “Ought never to have let him go. I told him not to,” he muttered from time to time.

  To begin with Charles tried to encourage him.

  “Probably went too far. Misjudged the time it would take them to get back. Finding the going difficult in the dark,” he suggested.

  But when a couple of hours of darkness had passed he gave that up. We just sat, not talking much. Listening intensely, but less hopefully, each time Joe gave one of his hails.

  Three hours after dark Joe came back once more to the fire we were keeping well ablaze as a beacon. He demanded:

  “Isn’t somebody going to do something? My boy’s with that lot. Some of you come out and help me look for him.”

  He stood gazing round at us. Nobody moved.

  “All right, then. I’ll go by myself,” he said.

  “Oh, no, Joe,” implored his wife.

  “Come now, Joe,” Walter said. “You can’t get along through that stuff in the dark. That’s very likely what they’ve found out, and decided to lay up somewhere.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” countered Joe.

  “It’s what I’m hoping,” Walter told him. “If I’m wrong, and they have run into danger, there’s no sense in any of us running ourselves into the same danger – particularly in the dark. We’ve got to wait till morning.”

  Joe stood there irresolutely, his wife plucking nervously at his sleeve. He glanced again into the darkness. Presently he sat down, staring disconsolately into the fire.

  We had kept the news of David’s death from the children. Now Chloe, the eldest Brinkley child inquired:

  “What’s dangerous, Daddy?”

  Charles replied diplomatically:

  “Walter only said if there were any danger, dear. You see, we really don’t know very much about the island yet. There may be – er – snakes and things, so it’s well to be careful.”

  “Oh,” said Chloe. “I thought you might mean the black men.”

  “Now why should you think that?” Charles said, puzzled. “They were perfectly harmless fellows. Anyway, they all went away home, on the ship.”

  “Oh, then they must have been other black men,” said Chloe.

  Charles looked at her with more attention.

  “What must have been other black men?” he asked.

  “The ones Peter and I saw this afternoon,” she told him.

  He regarded her for a moment, and then turned inquiringly to his son. Peter nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “They hadn’t any clothes on, and they were all shiny.”

  Charles frowned.

  “Where was this?”

  “We went up to see the buildings, and it was very hot there so we came away and sat in the shade of some trees, and while we were sitting there they came out of the trees further along.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Only two.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Nothing. They just stood at the edge of the trees, looking at the buildings, then they disappeared again.”

  Walter leaned forward, regarding the two of them intently.

  “You’re quite sure of this?”

  “Oh, yes,” Chloe assured him. “Peter saw them first. Just the top half of them among the bushes. He pointed, and then I saw them, too.”

  Walter looked round the circle.

  “Has anyone else seen these men, or any signs of them?”

  No one answered. Heads shook.

  “They can’t have been here when we came. There’d be traces of some sort. Did anyone count the Islander party aboard before they left?”

  “One naturally supposed the skipper would have arranged for that,” Charles replied.

  There was a reflective silence until Jamie McIngoe put the question which was in everyone’s mind:

  “If it’s some of that lot that have stayed behind, what would they want to be staying for?”

  It remained unanswered – and troubling…

  ♦

  In the morning we dug a grave, and laid David’s body in it, Charles spoke a short prayer over him, and we filled it in.

  Of the exploring party there was still no sign.

  Joe Shuttleshaw continued to demand a search-party. There were no volunteers. Walter with Charles’ support continued to temporize.

  “It’s no use our going blundering in until we know more about what we’re up against. Anything that has accounted for a party of seven – if it has, which we don’t yet know – can as easily account for another party of seven, or more. The best thing we can do now is to get on with the work.”

  There was little enthusiasm for that.

  It was Camilla who proposed a solution. She tackled Walter.

  “Joe’s right,” she told him. “We can’t simply do nothing. There must be a search. I’ve an idea I’d like to try out. Now, first, have we any insecticide?”

  “Several drums of different kinds,” he told her.

  “And spray-guns?”

  “There should be two or three dozen, but – ”

  “Good,” she interrupted. “Then this is what I propose to try…”

  By midday she and Joe were prepared. Both wore trousers tucked into high boots, long-sleeved jackets fastened to the neck, and gloves. On their heads were wide-brimmed hats, crudely woven out of split cane and palm leaves. Over the hats, disposed in the manner of a bee-keeper’s veil and tucked into the jacket, were two or three thicknesses of mosquito-netting. They were carrying machete scabbards attached to their belts, and both were armed with spray-guns which they had already used liberally on each other.

  “Not that insecticide is likely to do much harm to spiders,” Camilla said, “but they’ve sensitive feet, and they won’t like it, so it may keep us free of them.”

  They refilled the spray-guns. Joe hung a spare can of insecticide on his belt, and they were ready to start. Before they left Charles beckoned Camilla aside, behind the angle of some of the packing cases he put his hand in his pocket and then extended it towards her.

  “Can you use one of these?” he asked her.

  She looked at the revolver in his hand.

  “Yes, but – ” she began.

  “Then you’d better take it. After all, we’re not sure that the spiders are the only trouble, are we? But look after it; we may need it later.”

  Camilla hesitated, then:

  “All right. Thanks,” she said, and slipped it into her pocket.

  We all accompanied them to the start of the overgrown track along which the exploring party had already hacked a path, and watched them make their way up it until they disappeared at a turn. Then we trooped back.

  I, for one, was feeling rather
small. I imagine Walter was, too. He said, with a slightly defensive air:

  “After all, it was her idea…And she was right about there having to be a search, of course…But we can’t afford to risk more people than we have to…”

  It was four hours later that Camilla returned. She was out of the trees and halfway to us before anyone was aware of her. She was walking slowly, carrying her bat and veil in her hand. We ran to meet her.

  “Where’s Joe?” Mrs Shuttleshaw cried.

  “He’s coming,” Camilla told her, with a vague backward gesture.

  “Did you find them?” Walter asked.

  She looked at him with a blank expression. Then she nodded slowly.

  “Yes…We found them…” she said.

  There could be no doubt what that meant. She was looking all-in. I glanced at Walter, and led her off towards the encampment. He stayed behind to quieten the rest. By the time he joined us, I had her sitting in a chair, drinking a stiff brandy and water.

  “They were all dead?” he asked.

  She nodded, stared at her glass for a moment, and then finished off the brandy.

  “They’d got about a mile and a half,” she said.

  “It was the spiders?” asked Walter.

  Camilla nodded again.

  “Myriads of spiders, swarming all over them.” She shuddered. “Joe wanted to find his boy. He started using the spray-gun on them. It was horrible. I came away…”

  “They didn’t attack you?” Walter asked.

  “They tried,” she said. “They came for us in hundreds, and started to climb up our legs, but they didn’t like it. They soon let go and fell off. Some of them dropped on us from the bushes, but they soon fell off, too.” She shook her head. “They kept on trying. Hundreds of thousands of them. The others can’t have had a chance. It must have been quick – like it was with David…”

  There was a sound of voices outside. Walter looked out.

  “It’s Joe,” he told us, and left.

  I went to the entrance. Away near where the track left the shore I could see a figure, carrying something in his arms. Behind me Camilla’s voice said: