Books: Sacred Lunatic

MR. BLETTSWORTHY ON RAMPOLE ISLAND—H. G. Wells—Doubleday, Doran ($2-50).

The Story. Arnold Blettsworthy, newly weaned from Oxford, not only affianced himself to the tobacconist's yellow-haired daughter, but joined forces with his best friend in a project to enlighten the world through a chain of bright blue bookshops. Cheated by the friend, jilted by the tobacconist's daughter, Blettsworthy's disillusion affected him so desperately that his kindly solicitor-guardian prescribed the traditional remedy—a year on the high seas.

Instead of proverbial rollicking freedom, rhythmic sea-chanteys, rough cammeraderie of the sea, Blettsworthy, supercargo, found ship's quarters confining, and ship's officers hostile. The horizon, interminably empty, offered no distractions from his recent troubles; the officers, continually quarreling, added to the gloom. The captain, who by all standards of sea-lore should have concealed a heart of gold beneath his rough exterior, revealed, by persistent bullying, his petulant nature. Moreover he consumed his soup with a sibilant hiss. Blettsworthy, mimicking him, incurred a wrath that culminated horribly: the ship was wrecked off the stormy Patagonian coast; all hands were escaping by boat; the captain, before clearing, locked his supercargo into the sinking steward-room.

For days Blettsworthy watched in solitude his imminent submersion, observed the playful sharks, conjured, at best, rescue by savages. At long last, he was wakened from delirious nightmare by two of these swarthy brutes, and presented to the goggling, gabbling, filthy, cannibalistic, inhabitants of Rampole Island.

Established by a shrewd village elder as insane and therefore a sacred oracle, Blettsworthy eagerly assumed the role which preserved him from the dinner-pot. It was an easy part, for everything he said sounded mad enough, concerning as it did another, and therefore impossible world. The elder, interpreting these mad oracular utterances as convenient, found his Sacred Lunatic a useful alternative for the tribal totems, miniature sloths, to whose whispered advices all unpopular policies were attributed. These wriggly, but sacred, little animals were distantly related to the race of Great Ground Sloths, evil-smelling Megatheria, who persisted though they did not reproduce.

Sacred Lunatic easily acquired a sufficient smattering of Rampolese, quickly learned to relish succulent human meat. The Islanders prided themselves that they were not cannibalistic, but merely appreciative of the "gifts of the goddess"—bodies of criminals. Moral standards were unusually high, for the monotonous fish-diet made every man the more eager to detect a gustable neighbor's mortal infringement of law.

Gourmands saw further possibilities in the impending war with an upland tribe whose three offences were loudly proclaimed as cannibalism, bodily filth, disgusting stupidity in keeping totem bullfrogs as mystic rulers. But before their war was well under weigh—the generals persisted in time-honored-and-outworn methods—Blettsworthy had rescued a beautiful damsel from suicide, loved her, and carried her to his secret cave in ...