One of the great sci-fi novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Get a chair, set the lamp, lean back, and fly into the great unknown, as the world once did before television came to destroy the fertile field of human imagination. The interest in education, the arts and sciences, were once found in fiction novels, written with a purpose.
We had attended a party at Diamond Head; and
after dinner, comfortable on hikiee and easy-chairs
on the lanai, we fell to talking about the legends and
superstitions of the ancient Hawaiians. There were a
number of old-timers there, several with a mixture of
Hawaiian and American blood, and we were the only
malihinis-happy to be there, and happy to listen.
Most Hawaiian legends are rather childish, though
often amusing; but many of their superstitions are
grim and sinister-and they are not confined to ancient
Hawaiians, either. You couldn't get a modern kane or
wahine with a drop of Hawaiian blood in his veins to
touch the bones or relics still often found in hidden
burial caves in the mountains. They seem to feel the
same way about kahunas, and that it is just as easy to
be polite to a kahuna as not-and much safer.
I am not superstitious, and I don't believe in ghosts;
so what I heard that evening didn't have any other
effect on me than to entertain me. It couldn't have
been connected in any way with what happened later
that night, for I scarcely gave it a thought after we left
the home of our friends; and I really don't know why I
have mentioned it at all, except that it has to do with
strange happenings; and what happened later that
night certainly falls into that category.
We had come home quite early; and I was in bed
by eleven o'clock; but I couldn't sleep, and so I got
up about midnight, thinking I would work a little on
the outline of a new story I had in mind.
I sat in front of my typewriter just staring at the keyboard,
trying to recall a vagrant idea that I had thought
pretty clever at the time, but which now eluded me. I
stared so long and so steadily that the keys commenced
to blur and run together.
A nice white sheet of paper peeped shyly out from
the underneath side of the platen, a virgin sheet of
paper as yet undefiled by the hand of man. My hands
were clasped over that portion of my anatomy where
I once had a waistline; they were several inches from
the keyboard when the thing happened-the keys
commenced to depress themselves with bewildering
rapidity, and one neat line of type after another appeared
upon that virgin paper, still undefiled by the
hand of man; but who was defiling it? Or what?
I blinked my eyes and shook my head, convinced
that I had fallen asleep at the typewriter; but I hadn'tsomebody,
or something, was typing a message
there, and typing it faster than any human hands ever
typed. I am passing it on just as I first saw it, but I can't
guarantee that it will come to you just as it was typed
that night, for it must pass through the hands of editors;
and an editor would edit the word of God.
Softcover, 5¼" x 8¼", 150+ pages
Perfect-Bound