The Man Eating Tree by phil Robinson. Preliminary note before committing this paper to
the ridicule of the great mediocre, For many I fear will be inclined to
regard this story as incredible, I would venture on the expression of an opinion
regarding credulity which I do not remember to have met before. It is this,
placing supreme wisdom and supreme unwisdom at the two extremes, and myself in
the exact mean between them, I am surprised to find that whether I travel
towards the one extreme or the other, the credulity of those I meet increases.
To put it as a paradox, whether a man be foolish or wiser
than I am, he is more credulous. I make this remark to point
out to those of the great mediocre whose notice it may have escaped, that
credulity is not of itself shameful or contemptible, and that it depends upon the
manner rather than the matter of their belief, whether they gravitate towards the sage
or the reverse way. According therefore, to the incredibility found in the following,
the reader may measure as pleases him his wisdom or his unwisdom z Oriel
end of preliminary note. Peregrine Oriel, my maternal uncle was a great traveler,
as his prophetical sponsors at the font seemed to have guessed he would be.
Indeed, he had rummaged in the garrets and cellars of the earth was
something more than ordinary diligence. But in the narrative of his travels he did
not, unfortunately preserve the judicious caution of Xenophon between the things seen and the
thing heard. And thus it came about that the town counselors of Brunsbutel,
to whom he had shown a duck billed platypus caught alive by him in Australia,
and who had him posted for an importer of artificial vermin, were not
alone in their skepticism of some of the old Man's tales. Thus, for
instance, who could hear and believe the tale of the man sucking tree,
from which he had barely escaped with his life. He called it himself more
terrible than the upas this awful plant that rears its splendid death shade in the
central solitude of a Nubian fern forest. Sickens by its unwholesome humors all vegetation
from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the
terror of the chase or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of
its boughs, Upon the birds that flitting across the open space come within the
charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its
great waxen flowers, Upon even man himself, when an infrequent prey, the
savage seeks its asylum in the storm, or turns from the harsh foot wounding
sword grass of the glade to pluck the wondrous fruit that hang plum down among
the wondrous foliage, and such fruit glorious golden ovals, great honey drops,
swelling by their own weight into pear shaped translucencies. The foliage glistens with a
strange dew that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a
rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes
of fierce, blood fed green show far up among the deep tinted foliage of
the terrible tree, and like a jealous bodyguard keep concealed the fearful secret of
the charnel house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant
a decent screen of living green. Such was his description of the plant.
And the other day, looking up in a botanical dictionary, I find that
there is really known to naturalists a family of carnivorous plants. But I see
that they are most of them very small, and prey upon little insects.
Only my maternal uncle, however, knew nothing of this, for he died
before the days of the discovery of the sun dew and pitcher plants, And,
grounding his knowledge of the man sucking tree simply on his own terrible experience
of it, explained its existence by theories of his own, denying the fixity
of all the laws of nature, except one that the stronger shall endeavor to
consume the weaker, and holding even this fixity to be itself only a means
to a greater general changefulness, he argued that, since any partial distribution of
the faculty of self defense would presume an unworthy partiality in the Creator, and
since the central instincts of beast and vegetable and manifest the analogous, the world
must be as precipient as sentient. Throughout carrying on his theory, for it
was something more than hypothesis. With him a stage or two further, he
arrived at the belief that, given the necessity of any imminent danger or urgent
self interest, every animal or vegetable could eventually revolutionize its nature. The wolf
feeding on grass or nesting in trees, and the violet arming herself with thorns
or entrapping insects. How he would ask, can we claim for man the
consequence of perceptions to sensations, and yet deny to beasts that here see,
feel, smell, and taste a precipient principle coexistent with their senses. And
if in the whole range of the animate world there is this gift of self
defense against extirpation and offense against weakness, why is the inanimate world holding as
fiercely struggle for existence as the other, to be left defenseless and unarmed?
And I did nigh that it is. The Brazilian epiphyte strangles the tree and
sucks out its juices. The tree again, to starve off its vampire parasite,
withdraws its juices into its roots and piercing the ground in some new place,
turns the current of its sap into other growths. The epiphyte then drops
off the dead boughs on to the fresh green sprouts springing from the ground beneath
it, And so the fight goes on again. Look at the Indian peepool
tree in what does the fierce yearning of its roots towards the distant well differ
from the sad struggling of the camel to the oasis, or of Sennachiab's army
to the saving nile? Is the sensitive plant unconscious? I have walked for
miles through plains of it, and watched till the watching almost made me afraid
lest the plants should pluck up courage and turn upon me, the green carpet
paling into silver gray before my feet and fainting away all round me as I
walked. So strangely did I feel the influence of this universal aversion that I
would have argued with the plant. But what was the use If only I
stretched out my hands, the mere shadow of the limb terrified the vegetable to
sickness. Shrubs crumbled up at every commencement of my speech, and at my
period's great sturdy looking bushes, to whose robustness I had foolishly appealed, sank
in pallid supplication. Not a leaf would keep me company. A breath went
forth from me that sickened life. My mere presence paralyzed life. And I
was glad at last to come out among a less timid vegetation, and to
feel the resentful spear grass retaliating on the heedlessness that would have crushed it.
The vegetable world, however, has its revenge. You may keep the guinea
pig in a hutch, but how will you pet the basilisk. The little
sensitive plant in your garden amuses your children, who will find pleasure also in
seeking cock chaffers spin round on a pin. But how could you transplant a
vegetable that seizes the running deer, strikes down the passing bird, and,
once taking hold of him, sucks the carcass of man himself till his matter
becomes as vague as his mind, and all his animate capabilities cannot snatch him
from the terrible embrace of God. Help him an inanimate tree. Many years
ago, said my uncle, I turned my restless steps towards Central Africa,
and made the journey from whether Senegal empties itself into the Atlantic to the Nile,
skirting the Great Desert and reaching Nubia. On my way to the eastern
coast, I had with me then three native attendants, two of them brothers,
the third Otona, a young savage from the Gaboon uplands, a mere
lad in his teens. And one day, leaving my mule with the two
men who were pitching my tent for the night, I went on with my
gun, the boy accompanying me, towards a fern force, which I saw
in the near distance. As I approached it, I found the force was
cut into two by a wide glade, and, seeing a small herd of
the common antelope, an excellent beast in the pot, browsing their way along
the shaded side, I crept after them, though ignorant of their real danger.
The herd was suspicious and slowly trotting along before me. Enticed me for
a mile or more along the verge of the fern growths. Turning a corner,
I suddenly became aware of a solitary tree growing in the middle of the
glade, one tree alone. It struck me at once that I had never
seen a tree exactly like it before, But being intent upon venison for my
supper, I looked at it only long enough to satisfy my first surprise at
seeing a single plant of such rich growth flourishing luxuriantly in a spot where only
the harsh fern canes seemed to thrive. The deer, meanwhile, were midway
between me and the tree, and looking at them, I saw they were
going to cross the glade. Exactly opposite them was an opening in the forest
in which I should certainly have lost my supper. So I fired into the
middle of the family. As they were filing before me. I hit a
young fawn, and the rest of the herd, wheeling round in their sudden
terror, made off in the direction of the tree, leaving the fawn struggling
on the ground Otona. The boy ran forward at my order to secure it,
but the little creature, seeing him coming, attempted to follow its comrades,
and at a fair pace held on their course. The herd had meanwhile
reached the tree, but suddenly, instead of passing under it, swerved in
their career and swept round it at some yards distance. Was I mad?
Or did the plant really try to catch the deer. On a sudden I
saw, or thought I saw the tree violently agitated, And while the ferns
all round were standing motionless in the dead evening air, its boughs were swayed
by some sudden gust towards the herd, and swept in the force of their
impulse, almost to the ground. I drew my hand across my eyes,
closed them for a moment, and looked again. The tree was as motionless
as myself towards it, and now close to it, the boy was running
in excited pursuit of the fawn. He stretched out his hands to catch it.
It bounded from his eager grasp. Again he reached forward, and again
it escaped him. There was another rush forward, and the next instant,
boy and deer were beneath the tree. And now there was no mistaking what
I saw. The convulsed with motion, leaned forward, swept its thick foliaged
boughs to the ground, and enveloped from my sight the pursuer and the pursued.
I was within a hundred yards, and the cry of otuna from the
midst of the tree came to me. In all the clearness of its agony.
There was then one stifled, strangling scream, and except for the agitation
of the leaves where they had closed upon the boy, there was not a
sign of life. I called out auturner, no answer came. I tried
to call out again, but my utterance was like that of some wild beast
smitten at once with sudden tear and its death wound. I stood there,
changed from all semblance of a human being. Not all the tears of earth
together could have made me take my eye from the awful plant, or my
foot off the ground. I must have stood thus for at least an hour,
for the shadows had crept out from the half across the glade before that
hideous paroxysm of fear left me. My first impulse then was to creep stealthily
away, lest the tree should perceive me. But my returning reason bade me
approach it. The boy might have fallen into the lair of some beast of
prey, or perhaps the terrible life in the tree was that of some great
serpent among its branches. Preparing to defend myself, I approached the silent tree,
the harsh grass crisping beneath my feet with a strange loudness. The cicadas
in the forest, shrilling till the air seemed throbbing round me with waves of
sound. The terrible truth was soon before me, in all its awful novelty.
The vegetable first discovered my presence at about fifty yards distance. I then
became aware of the stealthy motion among the thick lipped leaves, reminding me of
some wild beast slowly gathering itself up from long sleep. A vast coil of
snakes in restless motion. Have you ever seen bees hanging from a bough,
a great cluster of bodies, bee clinging to bee, and by striking the
bough or agitating the air, caused that massed life to begin sulkily to disintegrate,
each insect asserting its individual right to move. And do you remember how,
without one bee leaving the pencile cluster, the whole became gradually instinct with
sullen life and horrid, with a multitudinous motion. I came within twenty yards
of it. The tree was quivering through every branch, muttering for blood,
and helpless, with rooted feet, yearning with every branch towards me. It
was that terror of the deep sea which the men of the northern fiords dread,
and which anchored upon some sunken rock, stretches into vein space. Its
longing arms pellucid as the sea itself, and as relentless, maimed Polypheme groping
for his victims. Each separate leaf was agitated and hungry. Like hands,
they fumbled together, their fleshy palms, curling upon themselves and again unfolding,
closing on each other, and falling apart again, thick, helpless, fingerless
hands rather lips or tongues than hands, dimpled closely with little cup like hollows.
I approached nearer and nearer, step by step, till I saw that
these soft horrors were all of them in motion, opening and closing incessantly.
I was now ten yards of the farthest reaching bough. Every part of it
was hysterical with excitement. The agitation of its members was awful, sickening,
yet fascinating, in an ecstasy of eagerness for the food so near them.
The leaves turned upon each other, two meeting, would suck together face to
face with a force that compressed their joint thickness to a half, thinning the
two leaves into one. Now grappling in a volume like a double shell,
writhing like some green worm, and at last, faint with the violence of
the paroxysm, would slowly separate, falling apart. As leeches gorged drop off
the limbs. A sticky dew glistened in the dimples, welled over and trickled
down the leaf. The sound of it dripping from leaf to leaf made it
seem as if the tree was muttering to itself. The beautiful golden fruit as
they swung here and there, were clutched now by one leaf and now by
another, held for a moment close enfolded from the sight, and then as
suddenly released here a large leaf, vampire like, had sucked out the juices
of a smaller one. It hung limp and bloodless, like a carcass of
which the weasel has tired. I watched the terrible struggle till my starting eyes,
strained by intense attention, refused their offers. And I can hardly say
what I saw, But the tree before me seemed to have become a live
beast. Above me, I felt conscious, was a great limb, and
each of its thousand clammy hands reached downwards towards me, fumbling, It strained,
shivered, rocked, and heaved. It flung itself about in despair.
The boughs, tantalized to madness with the presence of flesh, were tossed to
this side and to that in the agony of a frantic desire. The leaves
were wrung together as the hands of one driven to madness by sudden misery.
I felt the vile dew spurting from the tense veins fall upon me. My
clothes began to give out a strange odor. The ground I stood on glistened
with animal juices. Was I bewildered by terror? Had my senses abandoned me
in my need? I know not, But the trees seemed to me to
be alive, leaning over towards me. It seemed to be pulling up its
room roots from the softened ground, and to be moving towards me. A
mountainous monster with myriad lips mumbling together for my life was upon me, Like
one who desperately defends himself from imminent death. I made an effort for life
and fired my gun at the approaching horror. To my dizzied senses, the
sound seemed far off, but the shock of the recoil partially recalled me to
myself, and starting back, I reloaded. The shots had torn their way
into the soft body of the great thing. The trunk as it received the
wound, shuddered, and the whole tree was struck with a sudden quiver.
A fruit fell down, slipping from the leaves, now rigid with swollen veins
as from carven foliage. Then I saw a large arm slowly droop, and
without a sound, it was severed from the juice fattened bowl and sank down
softly, noiselessly through the glistening leaves. I fired again, and another vile
fragment was powerless dead. At each discharge, the terrible vegetable yielded a life
piecemeal. I attacked it, killing here a leaf and there a branch.
My fury increased with a slaughter, till when my ammunition was exhausted, the
splendid giant was left a wreck, as if some hurricane had torn through it.
On the ground lay heaped together, the fragments, struggling, rising and
falling, gasping over them, drooped in dying languor. A few stricken boughs,
while upright in the midst stood dripping at every joint the glistening trunk.
My continued firing had brought up one of my men on my mule. He
dared not, so he told me come near me, thinking me mad.
I had now drawn my hunting knife, and with this was fighting with the
leaves. Yes, but each leaf was instinct with a hard life, and
more than once I felt my hand entangled for a moment and seized as if
by sharp lips. Ignorant of the presence of my companion, I made a
rush forward over the fallen foliage, and with a last paroxysm of frenzy,
drove my knife up to the handle into the soft bowl, and, slipping
on the fast congealing sap, fell exhausted and unconscious among the still panting leaves.
My companions carried me back to the camp, and, after vainly searching
for otuna, awaited my return to consciousness. Two or three hours elapsed before
I could speak, and several days before I could approach the terrible thing.
My men would not go near it. It was quite dead, for as
we came up, a great build bird with gaudy plumage that had been securely
feasting on the decaying fruit flew up from the wreck. We removed the rotting
foliage, and there among the dead leaves, still limp, with juices and
pots filed round the roots, we found the ghastly relics of many former meals
and its last nourishment, the corpse of little Otuna. To have removed the
leaves would have taken too long, so we buried the body as it was,
with a hundred vampire leaves still clinging to it. Such as nearly as
I remember it was my uncle's story of the man eating Tree. End of
the Man Eating Tree by phil Robinson