THE BLACK PHANTOM

Here, where he had rested before, he would sleep again [Page 217]

Copyright, 1922, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Copyright, 1922, BY
THE OPEN ROAD

Printed in the United States of America

TO MY SON
SPENCER KELSEY MILLER

INTRODUCTION

The dried or mounted skins of animals from out-of-the-way places are familiar to every one who has visited museums and other similar institutions. But, no matter how cleverly arranged, they suggest comparatively little of the creatures’ real appearance in their native environment.

The comedies, the tragedies, and the life stories of the untrammelled wild creatures are infinitely more fascinating than a survey of their lifeless and often faded forms, only too frequently collected by the hundreds with little other thought than that of classification or the possession first of rare or undescribed species.

It was with the view of bringing to light the home life of some of the jungle’s inhabitants that “The Black Phantom” was written.

Leo E. Miller

Contents

Illustrations

With the coming of night, Siluk, the Storm-God, laid a heavy hand upon the cowering jungle. Now, the coming of night in the Upper Amazon is in itself an awe-inspiring event; but coupled with the furious onslaught of Siluk, the Storm-God, it is terrible.

In the tropics there is not the lengthy twilight of a temperate clime; nor the fearsome splendor of the Aurora Borealis with its million streamers of ghastly light shooting into the heavens in a fan-shaped flare of quivering color to lend mystery and enchantment to the long months of the frigid, scintillating polar night.

One moment, the sun like a brassy ball of fire hangs low upon the threatening horizon; the next, it has dropped into the belt of grayish mist that marks the earth’s end and darkness has spread its silent, ominous mantle over the forest. Almost, as a room is plunged into blackness upon the snuffing out of a candle at midnight, so the jungle is flooded with gloom at the snap of the solar switch.

Uru, the great howling monkey, eyed with suspicion the bank of angry clouds descending from the slopes of the dark mountain masses to the west. Then he turned to his party, five in number, and from his throat there emanated a few gruff barks followed by a long-drawn, rumbling roar. The females hugged close the branches, gave one furtive look at the threatening sky, and joined their voices in the deafening chorus that shook the wide-spreading canopy of the tall ceiba tree and penetrated into the innermost recesses of the jungle a distance measured in miles. Then the troop clumsily made its way over the swaying branches and sought a friendly shelter in the crown of a chonta palm.

The wild things of the forest heard the warning and understood its meaning. From the snug security of the cavernous greenheart, the little, woolly douroucoulis or night monkeys roused themselves from their daylight slumbers, peered out into the fading light with round, blinking eyes, and then curled up again for another nap.

Sama, the tapir, one massive forefoot raised in midair, stopped