The Black Phantom

by Leo E. Miller

It was then he noted that the white birds that had made the treetops their home were no more. Also the lines of twinkling wings linking the nesting site with the marsh in which they fed were lacking. The place seemed strangely deserted and unnatural without their hoarse croaks and flashing bodies among the green leaves.

However, newcomers to the locality had taken their place. Huge, black birds circled over the forest island. Gaunt, dusky forms sat ghoul-like on the stick platforms that had been nests filled with impatient, squealing young birds, or flapped heavily and clumsily through the branches.

The oasis, now reeking of desolation far more than did the upper country when Tumwah descended upon it, had been deprived of its attractiveness and Warruk lost no time in leaving it. He followed the little watercourse straight to the marsh. And there new experiences awaited him.

The borders of the reed-dotted water were flecked with white. That much he saw from a distance. Of course it was the egrets and their presence here explained their absence in the treetops. But, why were they all so motionless? Before, he had been unable to approach to within a dozen paces of them! Now, not one stirred although he was less than half that distance away and the slight wind that blew ruffled their feathers in a most peculiar manner. He drew still nearer. Then it dawned upon him that they were dead. Rafts of fish, also dead, floating on the surface of the water dotted the edges of the marsh. And, strangest of all, queer footprints were visible in the mud. They were unlike any Warruk had ever seen—long, broad, and giving off a strange scent. He sniffed the tracks and followed them entirely around the marsh to the river. There they disappeared at the water’s edge.

For once the Jaguar broke his rule not to eat anything he had not killed. The birds for which he had longed were irresistible so, cat-like, he picked one up in his mouth, carried it away a short distance, and then, finding it not too rank, ate it. After that he started to get another one. Like the one he had just eaten, the bird had been mutilated by some ruthless hand; a part of its back had been torn away. Warruk started off with the prize in his mouth but before he had taken many steps a strange feeling came over him. A shudder passed over his powerful frame and he became violently ill. He dropped the bird he was carrying and rushing to the stream drank greedily, for a burning thirst had now taken possession of him; and then followed nausea so violent that it left him all but lifeless.

How many hours he lay on the bank of the stream, too sick to move, none can tell; but it was many. Again and again he regained his senses long enough to lap up water in great gulps and that always seemed, at least partially, to quench the fire that was consuming him within. When a measure of relief finally came he crawled weakly from the neighborhood, determined never to visit it again.

In some manner Warruk connected his predicament with the new tracks in the mud and the strange scent they conveyed. And he was right, for the first time in his life he had come upon the trail of man, and upon man’s handiwork in all its most pitiless destructiveness.

What had happened was this: A party of plume hunters had discovered the feeding-ground of the egrets; had gathered up great quantities of the imprisoned fish and after poisoning them had redistributed them over the surface of the water. The birds ate and died. Then the men returned, stripped the plumes from their luckless victims and departed in their canoes. The young in the platform nests in the forest island called in vain for their elders and for the food they brought, at first lustily, then feebly until they starved to death. Then the vultures came, making a loathsome feast on the bodies of the little creatures that had perished so miserably. The work of extermination was complete.

Warruk advanced slowly and cautiously for now he knew that in the strange country danger lurked—danger of a kind unknown to him and of a subtle quality. If the creatures whose footprints he had seen and with whose scent the border of the marsh was redolent could outwit the wary birds that had always eluded him, what surprise might not they hold in store for him?

But, there was that insistent urge that bade him advance. And, too, Tumwah was stretching his devastating hand toward the lower country. The animals that had found a temporary refuge in the oasis were moving onward also, for the water in the pools was vanishing and the vegetation began to droop. Day by day the sun’s rays grew more intense until it seemed they must set the world afire.