the Xinguays disposed of their own dead. But I felt sure it would not be by burial. I tried to tell them what I wanted done. But it was no use. Besides it would have been impossible to have dug graves, or even one big grave, for the nine. And I was too weak, too shaken, too utterly sick at heart to care very much what became of those poor, distorted, shapeless, pulpy things that had once been my fellow men.
So I told the Xinguays to do whatever they did with the bodies of their own people. I was almost afraid to watch. I knew the Xinguays were not head-hunters. And even if they had been, the heads of my comrades would have been worthless to them. But I didn’t know what even more horrible funeral rites might be in vogue. Some of the jungle tribes have pretty rotten customs, you know—boiling, macerating, cannibalism. But I needn’t have worried. The Xinguays used burial caves. It was almost more than I could endure—watching them lift those boneless horrible things, that had been men, upon litters. But it was done at last. I didn’t know any burial service and no one but Elwin had had a Bible. But I managed to say a prayer as the funeral cortege started for the caves. I was too weak to go with them, and that was all I could do.
It was better, once they had been taken from sight. The whole thing seemed more like a nightmare, an unreality without them. And, now that my brain was working more calmly, I wondered what had really happened, what had killed my comrades, what had been the cause of their revolting disfigurations. There hadn’t been a blow struck, I hadn’t seen an arrow discharged or a spear thrown and yet—Suddenly it dawned upon me! It was that noise, that fearful, soul-searing vibratory note! It seemed incredible, utterly preposterous. But I knew it must be so. The agonies I had suffered from it, the brain-racking pounding as if actual blows were being struck upon my skull, the fact that I had fallen unconscious from its effects convinced me. And was it so incredible, so fantastical? I remembered that my professor of physics in college had taught us that steel, stone—any substance—can be destroyed by some certain vibration. That if the proper vibratory wave were struck the strongest edifice would crumble. I remember he pointed out that rhythmic vibrations are so destructive that in the days of horse-drawn vehicles all bridges bore signs requesting that drivers walk their horses over the structures, and that he had told of a man who had broken the trunnions of a huge, sea-coast defense cannon by tapping them regularly, and with measured strokes, with a tack hammer.
If metal, if stone—could be disintegrated by vibrations, why not animal tissues, bones? That was it! Disintegrated! That was the word! That was what had happened! My comrades, standing there in the plaza, had been disintegrated by that hellish vibratory note from the Death Drum. No wonder their bodies had been shapeless, pulpy! Every bone, every vestige of their skulls had been disintegrated, reduced to powder!
But why hadn’t I been killed? I had heard the note. I had felt the excruciating agonies that had torn me, as it rose louder and louder. And I had lost consciousness.
I COULD think of but one answer. I had been apart from the others—twenty yards at least from the spot where they had stood. I must have been outside the sphere of death—just on the verge of the vibrations that killed. Probably, I thought—and later I knew this to be the case—the damnable, hellish contrivance projected its deadly vibratory notes in a beam of waves of sound just as a search light projects its beam of light. And just as an object on the edge of the light-beam may be but faintly illuminated, and an object beyond that may be entirely outside the range of its light, so I had been but slightly touched by that awful beam of vibrations which had been directed upon my comrades.
But that didn’t account for some things. A beam of light might be controlled, confined to a certain sharply defined area. But the sound of the Death Drum—any sounds—travelled in all directions. If it had been the sounds that had destroyed my comrades, that had so nearled killed me, why hadn’t everyone—even the Indians—within hearing of the hellish thing been affected? And how could human beings—the Indians—operate the awful device, stand beside it and not be disintegrated?
There was another matter, too, that kept hammering at my brain. Why had the eyes of my comrades escaped destruction? Why had they remained intact when flesh and bone had been reduced to jelly?
I couldn’t reason it out; but I found out later. And I know you’ll want to know, so I may as well tell you now. You remember I spoke of the masked Xinguay? Well, the reason he was masked, the reason he was clad in leaves and feathers, was because wood and leaves are immune to the effects of the vibrations. Just as rubber, bakelite, glass serve as insulators against electric currents, so wood and leaves served as insulators against the death-dealing waves of sound from the Xinguay’s Death Drum.
Wood and leaves and yes—one other substance: water! That’s why the eyes remained untouched. And the sounds—outside of the concentrated, focussed beam from the projectors, are not dangerous. They are merely sounds. Even the Indians operating the damnable thing were safe enough. But they didn’t take chances. They wore long coats of leaves and wooden masks. How could they see? How could they leave openings for their eyes without danger? How could they leave hands and feet unprotected? you ask.
They covered their hands and feet with beaten bark cloth, and tiny holes let them see without danger, for their eyes are in themselves ample protection to their brains—Don’t you see? Besides, they never get the full effect of the vibrations—they were careful about that. I don’t think even their masks could have saved them if they had entered the beam itself.
