‘I am hearing you,’ said the captain.
‘Then, to put it shortly, I have been at Cagayan Sulu before, on an exploring cruise. That was in 1897. I never wanted to go back to it. Logan, did I not regret the choice of that port when the news reached us in New Zealand?’
Logan nodded. ‘You funked it,’ he said.
‘When I was at Cagayan Sulu in 1897 I heard from the natives of a singular tribe in the centre of the island. This tribe is the Berbalangs.’
‘That’s what Professor Jenkins called them,’ said the captain.
‘The Berbalangs are subject to neither of the chiefs in the island. No native will approach their village. They are cannibals. The story is that they can throw themselves into a kind of trance. They then project a something or other—spirit, astral body, influence of some kind—which flies forth, making a loud noise when distant.’
‘That’s what we heard,’ said the captain.
‘But is silent when they are close at hand.’
‘Silent they were,’ said the captain.
‘They then appear as points of red flame.’