SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: BLACK BUTTERFLIES

"Black Butterflies" by Elmer Brown Mason  (first published in All-Story Weekly, June 24, 1916;  reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1949; in Rainbow Fantasia:  35 Spectrumatic Tales of Wonder, edited by Forrest J Ackerman, 2001; in Brown's collection of stories, The Golden Anaconda, 2009; in= Apemen!:  Classic Tales of Anthropoids, edited by T. M. Gray & Charles G. Waugh, 2013 [revised version edited by Gray, Jon A. Schlenker, & Waugh, 2021]; and in Zoologica Fantastica, edited by Chad Arment. 2013)

A nifty lost civilization story -- the type that was done so well in the early pulp magazines, and sometimes so poorly.

"The way was strewn with the dead who had dared seek out the secret of those jungle depths ... but the lure was gold at safari's end, and the priceless wings of the sable  butterfly no man had ever caught..." -- introduction to the story in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. 

In brief, practical Scotsman Andy Freeman and his good friend, the obstinate Englishmen Trebor Dillingame, head into the depths of the Borneo jungle in search of rare butterflies and other species to sell to wealthy clients back home.  Specifically, they are search of a giant black butterfly -- a hitherto unknown species.  They are joined in their expedition  by the villainous, treacherous, and  murderous Gomez, who is in search for the reputed gold that lies deep in the jungle.  As they proceed, they encounter a beautiful white goddess who claims to be immortal, a race of humanoid apes, an ancient Chinese tong, flesh-eating insects, a giant underwater leech demanding sacrifices, and danger at every turn.

How could you ask for anything more?

Among the ingredients for this fantastic and enjoyable tale are:

• Kratas, the Preistess of the Land of Blood, who knows not death, who lives forever, and is the guardian of the souls of the dead.  The superstitious call her a hantus, a witch and a spirit who lives  on the top of Mount Kina Balu.  Kratas is very strong and very agile, and can disappear into the jungle easily; she is highly jealous and has fallen in ,love with Dillingame, whom she is obligated to slay.
• A mysterious and unnamed Chinese tong, which ruled Borneo long before the English, or even the Dutch appeared.   In this area, they live in a hidden city and are ruled by the cruel mandarin <Lo Chin, a giant 400-pound tyrant with a terribly disfigured face, a punshment for committing patricide.   
• The primitive Ida'an, a tribe under the control of the Chinese.
• A race of ape men, perhaps orangutangs, clad in sarongs and with human-like hair piled on top of their heads to contain poison darts.  They are experts with blowguns,  but appear to be under the sway of Kratas.
• Giant, flesh-eating caterpillars, eventually to mature into giant black butterflies which thirst for blood.  The black butterflies are sacred because they contain the souls of dead priests.
• A monstrous giant carnivorous leech living underneath a mysterious pool with red water.  Various Chinese and apemen are fed to it as sacrifices.
• A treasure trove of gold dust and nuggets, which is regularly transported out of the jungle to fund the tong in a manner that no authorities are aware of.  The dust is often carried inside large porcupine quills.
• And the Borneo jungle itself -- steaming hot, deadly, and mysterious.  It is portrayed in a very realistic manner by the author, who had spent time in Borneo and knows of what he writes.

Put it all together and you have a crackerjack of a story.

Mason wrote three stories about Andy Freeman, all published in Al-Story Weekly; this was the first.  the second "Red Tree-Frogs," was a direct sequel; the third story, "The Gem Vampire," which sends him on another Borneo adventure, this time with the son of Kratas and Dillingame.

Mason (1877-1955) was a bit of mystery man.  The son of a prominent family (his father was the surveyor general of Montana and his grandfather had been the mayor of Chicago when the Great Chicago Fire occurred), Mason himself suffered from wanderlust.  He would pick an area of the world at random and then go and live there until his money ran out.  then he would return home, get a job, and once he had money, would set off for another destination.  In this manner, he lived in Borneo, India, Europe, South America, and parts of Southern United States.  He was, at times, a journalist, a lumberman, an entomologist, and a writer, as well as in inveterate traveler.  As an entomologist, he was called  by the then-governor of south Carolina as the "bug man"; he became an expert on the Southern Pine beetle -- during this time in the South, he said that he had been "shot at twice and stabbed once in an illicit whiskey still in North Carolina, and generally had a good time."  At age 40, he enlisted in the army and was sent to France, where he was wounded at least three times and gassed at least twice, and spent six weeks in an English hospital.  He also reportedly had a raucous time while serving.  One of his later jobs was with the American Cancer Society, which may or may  not -- records are inconclusive -- have placed him on stage with Madame Curie in 1931.

From 1911 through 1926, Mason published over ninety stories.  From the Pulp Flakes blog, October 5, 2012:  "He wrote stories set around the world, in Borneo, Africa, South America and the swamp country in the US.  Some of his earliest stories centered around animals -- with the heroes usually trying to collect rare animals for one reason or the other.  These rare animals included an albino otter, a white gorilla, a dinosaur, and a large black butterfly.  The stories are usually set in place he had personally visited, so there is an authentic flavor to them."  Another series character was Wandering Smith, a swamp guide feature in five stories.

The April 1949 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries is available here:

https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/SF/FFM/FFM_1949_04.pdf

And here:

https://archive.org/details/Famous_Fantastic_Mysteries_v10n04_1949-04_unz.org/mode/1up