Read Online Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) by Henry S. Whitehead, David Stuart Davies - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Henry S. Whitehead, David Stuart Davies
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father’s part, because, not long before his own birth, his mother had undergone a more than ordinarily harrowing experience, which, Williamson and I agreed, should have made any man that called himself a man considerate to half the woman Mrs Morley was, for the rest of his natural life!
The couple had, it appeared, been married about five years at the time, were as yet childless, and were living on the Island of Barbados in the Lower Caribbean. Their house was an estate-house, ‘in the country’, but quite close-in to the capital town, Bridgetown. Quite nearby, in the very next estate-house, in fact, was an eccentric old fellow, who was a retired animal collector. Mr Burgess, the neighbor, had been in the employ for many years before his retirement due to a bad clawing he had received in the wilds of Nepaul, of the Hagenbecks and Wombwells.
Mr Burgess’s outstanding eccentricity was his devotion to ‘Billy’, a full-grown orang-utan which, like the fellow in Kipling’s horrible story, Bimi , he treated like a man, had it at the table with him, had taught the creature to smoke – all that sort of thing. The negroes for miles around were in a state of sustained terror, Williamson said.
In fact, the Bimi story was nearly reënacted there in Barbados, only with a somewhat different slant. We boys at school read Kipling, and Sherlock Holmes , and Alfred Henry Lewis’s Wolfville series those days, and Bimi was invoked as familiar to us both when Williamson told me what had happened.
It seems that the orang-utan and Mrs Morley were great friends. Old Burgess didn’t like that very well, and Douglas Morley, Williamson’s father, made a terrific to-do about it. He finally absolutely forbade his wife to go within a hundred yards of Burgess’s place unless for the purpose of driving past!
Mrs Morley was a sensible woman. She listened to her husband’s warnings about the treachery of the great apes, and the danger she subjected herself to in such matters as handing the orang-utan a cigarette, and willingly enough agreed to keep entirely away from their neighbor’s place so long as the beast was maintained there at large and not, as Mr Morley formally demanded of Burgess, shut up in an adequate cage. Mr Morley even appealed to the law for the restraint of a dangerous wild beast, but could not, it appeared, secure the permanent caging of Burgess’s strange pet.
Then, one night, coming home late from a Gentlemen’s Party somewhere on the island, Mr Morley had walked into his house and discovered his wife unconscious, lying on the floor of the dining-room, most of her clothing torn off her, and great weals and bruises all over her where the orang-utan had attacked her, sitting alone in a small living-room next the dining-room.
Mrs Morley, hovering between life and death for days on end with a bad case of physiological shock, could give no account of what had occurred, beyond the startling apparition of ‘Billy’ in the open doorway, and his leap towards her. She had mercifully lost consciousness, and it was a couple of weeks before she was able to do so much as speak.
Meanwhile Morley, losing no time, had dug out a couple of his negroes from the estate-village, furnished them with hurricane-lanterns for light on a black and starless night, and, taking down his Martini-Henry elephant gun, and charging the magazine with explosive bullets, had gone out after the orang-utan, and blown the creature, quite justifiably of course, into a mound of bloody pulp. He had, again almost justifiably, it seemed to Williamson and me, been restrained only by his two Blacks disarming him lest he be hung by the neck until dead, from disposing of his neighbor, Burgess, with the last of the explosive cartridges. As it was, although Morley was not a man of any great physical force, being slightly built and always in somewhat precarious health, he had administered a chastising with his two hands to the fatuous ex-wild animal collector,
The couple had, it appeared, been married about five years at the time, were as yet childless, and were living on the Island of Barbados in the Lower Caribbean. Their house was an estate-house, ‘in the country’, but quite close-in to the capital town, Bridgetown. Quite nearby, in the very next estate-house, in fact, was an eccentric old fellow, who was a retired animal collector. Mr Burgess, the neighbor, had been in the employ for many years before his retirement due to a bad clawing he had received in the wilds of Nepaul, of the Hagenbecks and Wombwells.
Mr Burgess’s outstanding eccentricity was his devotion to ‘Billy’, a full-grown orang-utan which, like the fellow in Kipling’s horrible story, Bimi , he treated like a man, had it at the table with him, had taught the creature to smoke – all that sort of thing. The negroes for miles around were in a state of sustained terror, Williamson said.
In fact, the Bimi story was nearly reënacted there in Barbados, only with a somewhat different slant. We boys at school read Kipling, and Sherlock Holmes , and Alfred Henry Lewis’s Wolfville series those days, and Bimi was invoked as familiar to us both when Williamson told me what had happened.
It seems that the orang-utan and Mrs Morley were great friends. Old Burgess didn’t like that very well, and Douglas Morley, Williamson’s father, made a terrific to-do about it. He finally absolutely forbade his wife to go within a hundred yards of Burgess’s place unless for the purpose of driving past!
Mrs Morley was a sensible woman. She listened to her husband’s warnings about the treachery of the great apes, and the danger she subjected herself to in such matters as handing the orang-utan a cigarette, and willingly enough agreed to keep entirely away from their neighbor’s place so long as the beast was maintained there at large and not, as Mr Morley formally demanded of Burgess, shut up in an adequate cage. Mr Morley even appealed to the law for the restraint of a dangerous wild beast, but could not, it appeared, secure the permanent caging of Burgess’s strange pet.
Then, one night, coming home late from a Gentlemen’s Party somewhere on the island, Mr Morley had walked into his house and discovered his wife unconscious, lying on the floor of the dining-room, most of her clothing torn off her, and great weals and bruises all over her where the orang-utan had attacked her, sitting alone in a small living-room next the dining-room.
Mrs Morley, hovering between life and death for days on end with a bad case of physiological shock, could give no account of what had occurred, beyond the startling apparition of ‘Billy’ in the open doorway, and his leap towards her. She had mercifully lost consciousness, and it was a couple of weeks before she was able to do so much as speak.
Meanwhile Morley, losing no time, had dug out a couple of his negroes from the estate-village, furnished them with hurricane-lanterns for light on a black and starless night, and, taking down his Martini-Henry elephant gun, and charging the magazine with explosive bullets, had gone out after the orang-utan, and blown the creature, quite justifiably of course, into a mound of bloody pulp. He had, again almost justifiably, it seemed to Williamson and me, been restrained only by his two Blacks disarming him lest he be hung by the neck until dead, from disposing of his neighbor, Burgess, with the last of the explosive cartridges. As it was, although Morley was not a man of any great physical force, being slightly built and always in somewhat precarious health, he had administered a chastising with his two hands to the fatuous ex-wild animal collector,
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