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Female Corpses
in Crime Fiction
A Transatlantic Perspective
Glen S. Close
Gene
ral E
ditor
: Cliv
e Blo
om
Crime Files
Series Editor
Clive Bloom
Professor Emeritus
Middlesex University
London, UK
Since its invention in the nineteenth century, detective fiction has never
been more popular. In novels, short stories and films, on the radio, on
television and now in computer games, private detectives and psycho-
paths, poisoners and overworked cops, tommy gun gangsters and cocaine
criminals are the very stuff of modern imagination, and their creators a
mainstay of popular consciousness. Crime Files is a ground-breaking series
offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of
guides to the world of crime and detective fiction. Every aspect of crime
writing, from detective fiction to the gangster movie, true-crime exposé,
police procedural and post-colonial investigation, is explored through
clear and informative texts offering comprehensive coverage and theoreti-
cal sophistication.
Female Corpses in
Crime Fiction
A Transatlantic Perspective
Glen S. Close
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Madison, WI, USA
Crime Files
ISBN 978-3-319-99012-5 ISBN 978-3-319-99013-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99013-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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To Courtney
Acknowledgments
My thinking about the issues explored in this book has been enriched by
the labors of many scholars. I feel especially indebted to the work of
Elisabeth Bronfen, whose influence here runs far deeper than my few quo-
tations from her work might indicate. As a student of anatomical science
and culture, I have also learned a great deal from Ludmilla Jordanova,
Elizabeth Klaver, Katharine Park, Michael Sappol, Jonathan Sawday,
Lindsay Steenberg and Elizabeth Stephens. My understanding of crime
fiction has been strongly shaped, as my many references to their scholar-
ship attest, by the pioneering work of Sarah Dunant, Lee Horsley, Joan
Ramon Resina and David Trotter, among others. And as I have strayed
into areas of cultural critique remote from my disciplinary training in
Hispanic literatures, I have relied on the guidance of specialists including
Jacque Lynn Foltyn, Deborah Jermyn, David P. Pierson and Sue Tait. To
all the scholars I quote in the following pages, my sincere gratitude.
Parts of this book have appeared previously in other volumes: Brigitte
Adriaensen and Valeria Grinberg Pla, eds. Narrativas del crimen en
América Latina. Formas de la violencia del policial a la narconovela (Lit
Verlag 2012); Mónica Quijano and Héctor Fernando Vizcarra, eds.
Crimen y ficción. Narrativa literaria y audiovisual sobre la violencia en
América Latina (UNAM and Bonilla Artigas Editores 2015); and Brigitte
Adriaensen and Marco Kunz, eds. Narcoficciones en México y Colombia
(Iberoamericana Vervuert 2016). Thank you especially Brigitte, Marco
and Mónica for your invitations to splendid conferences at the Université
de Lausanne and the Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México, from
which two of those volumes sprang, and to the publishers for permission
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Introduction 1
5 Conclusion 203
Works Cited 237
Index 257
ix
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Mickey Spillane, I, the Jury, New York: E. P. Dutton &
Company, 1947 11
Fig. 1.2 Carter Brown, Slightly Dead, Sydney, Australia: Transport
Publishing, 1953? 12
Fig. 1.3 Don Tracy, Look Down on Her Dying, New York: Pocket Books,
196813
Fig. 1.4 Alarma!, Mexico City, August 1985 25
Fig. 1.5 A. A. Fair [Erle Stanley Gardner], Turn on the Heat, New York:
Dell Publishing, 1940 26
Fig. 2.1 Manhunt Detective Story Monthly, New York: St. John
Publications/Flying Eagle, August 1955 64
Fig. 2.2 Ed McBain, So Nude, So Dead, London: Titan Books, 2015 65
Fig. 2.3 Carter Brown, The Corpse, New York: New American Library,
195867
Fig. 2.4 Day Keene, Dead in Bed, New York: Pyramid Books, 1959 68
Fig. 2.5 Aylwin Lee Martin, Death for a Hussy, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ:
Graphic Publications, 1952 69
Fig. 2.6 Saucy Movie Tales, New York: Movie Digest Inc., February
193772
Fig. 2.7 Whit Harrison [Harry Whittington], Violent Night, New York:
Phantom Books, 1952 73
Fig. 2.8 Jonathan Latimer, The Lady in the Morgue, New York, Pocket
Books, 1958 75
Fig. 2.9 Michael Storme, Hot Dames on Cold Slabs, New York: Leisure
Library, 1952 80
xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Introduction
This is a book about male fantasies of killing women and ogling their dead,
naked bodies.
When I was a boy in the 1970s, my parents sometimes let me watch
television. One show that fired my tender imagination was Kolchak: The
Night Stalker, first aired on the ABC network in the United States during
the 1974–1975 season. This program, combining the detective formula
with horror, was about a grizzled Chicago reporter who investigated
bizarre crimes that turned out to be committed each week by a different
supernatural monster: vampires one week, a werewolf the next, then a
murderous doppelgänger ghost and so on. Since the narrow- minded
police would never believe that monsters were responsible, Kolchak was
left to vanquish them himself without ever quite managing to secure the
proof that might redeem his reputation as a meddlesome crackpot. As I
was completing this book, I had the occasion to watch Kolchak again for
the first time in forty years, and I was startled to feel my weekly childhood
fear instantly rekindled by a dark key change in Kolchak’s opening musical
theme. From my professional perspective as a scholar of crime literature,
however, I was also struck by the prominence of noir detective elements in
what I had remembered as a monster show. The show’s central setting is a
cluttered newspaper office located only yards from a noisy elevated train in
downtown Chicago, and many of the suspense scenes take place in urban
streets at night. The protagonist is a rumpled, cynical, wise-cracking loner
with little use for women and no perceptible personal life beyond his job.
His voiceover narration, often spoken into a handheld tape recorder, sum-
from the neck down as she walks home along a Chicago street at 3:55 a.m.
carrying a present from “an exceptionally satisfied customer” (at 6:43). The
camera follows the young, slender blonde woman until the Ripper surprises
and dispatches her with a rapier, in a scene lasting no more than 25 sec-
onds. The fourth victim is the second masseuse, shown clad in a gold-
sequined harem outfit in an Arabian-themed massage parlor understood to
provide sexual services. Outside the business, an illuminated sign with
blinking red lights advertises “Girls! Girls! Girls!” This victim is introduced,
exhibited and dispatched within 55 seconds. The Ripper’s fifth and final
victim in this 52-minute episode receives a somewhat different televisual
treatment: she is a female reporter for a sensationalist Chicago newspaper
who collaborates with Kolchak in trapping the Ripper, but who dies due to
her overzealous pursuit of him. Though scarcely heavier than the other
named female victims, all of whom are slender and most of whom appear
half-dressed, the fully dressed female reporter repeatedly attracts ridicule
for being identified as fat and for eating excessively. This character leads
Kolchak to the killer, and he literally trips over her cadaver in his own final
escape from the Ripper, but she merits not even a mention in his voiceover
summary of the case at the episode’s conclusion. Earlier in the episode, as
Kolchak and the female reporter discuss the parallels between the Chicago-
area “mutilation murders” and others worldwide resembling those of the
historical Jack the Ripper, she confirms that most of the victims were
“hookers” or “semi-pros” (at 14:45). This being prime-time 1970s net-
work television, the program shows neither sexual activity nor mutilated
bodies, but we are told that one of the victims had her throat cut and her
head “nearly severed from her body” (at 10:36), an image that recalls, as I
shall explain in the next chapter, the very origin of modern detective fiction
in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841).
As in innumerable other literary, televisual and cinematic fictions, most
of the female victims in Kolchak’s first episode appear only fleetingly, as
erotic suggestions and fleshy targets into which a potent male serial killer
may sink a blade. They are the primary bait, dangled in the opening min-
utes of the episode to attract the attention of viewers, which was the com-
modity sold by ABC to corporate advertisers. Decency standards on
terrestrial network television prevented Kolchak’s creators from fully visu-
alizing what I will call in this book the necropornographic fantasy, but no
such impediments exist today in fictions that circulate in mass commercial
markets. Less than a decade after Kolchak’s debut, an internationally dis-
tributed giallo slasher film such as The New York Ripper (Lo squartatore di
New York, dir. Lucio Fulci 1982) could show extremely explicit scenes of
4 G. S. CLOSE
live sex shows, naked women (models and sex workers) vivisected in close-
up and a male coroner who summarizes the slasher’s work in a half-jocular,
half-admiring tone: “He used a blade. He stuck it up her joy trail and slit
her wide open. […] [O]verall, it was, eh, good, efficient butchery” (at
11:58).1 In this book I will address the ideology implicit in this deplorably
ordinary plot device. It is something all of us have likely encountered
many, many times, whether in television police dramas, slasher or serial
killer movies, or in crime novels such as the ones to which I will devote the
majority of my attention. Watching or reading about women getting mur-
dered and men (and, sometimes, other women) investigating those mur-
ders is something millions of us do with our free time.
During the same years in which I first saw Kolchak, I also began reading
detective stories, long before succumbing to the charms of the Spanish
American Boom in high school and college. Early in my career as a literary
scholar, I grew interested in a pan-Hispanic variant of the crime novel
known as neopoliciaco, which appropriated the classic hard-boiled US style
in the service of local, leftist political critique. I wrote a study of the
Hispanic detective novel as a practice of urban mapping and, in some
cases, as a register of epidemic criminality in Spanish America, giving rise
to a post-neopoliciaco tendency of fictions centered not on the subjectivity
of a detective but rather on that of the criminal. As I concluded my read-
ing for that project, I became concerned with two other issues. First,
prodded by thoughtful comments I received on presentations of my work,
I became increasingly troubled by the evident contradictions between the
purportedly progressive politics of the neopoliciaco and the persistence in
it of masculinist and even misogynist models of gender representation.
Second, I wondered why cadavers, those most inert of literary characters,
seemed to me to be ultimately the most dynamic element of crime novels.
Why are novel readers and television viewers the world over compelled to
consume, time and again, narratives in which cadavers elicit minute exami-
nation and give rise to elaborate investigations and explanations of the
circumstances of death? And why are dead female bodies treated so dis-
tinctively and incessantly as sexual objects?
stories, the English novelist S.S. Van Dine stipulated as his rule number
seven: “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader
the corpse the better” (129). As George Orwell and others have noted,
cadavers did not become an almost invariable requirement of classical
English detective fiction until after World War I (Plain 32, 54 n5), but
critic Gill Plain attests to the enduring and expanded relevance of Van
Dine’s axiom when she writes that “[a]t the root of nearly all twentieth-
century criminal fictions lies the literal body of the corpse” (12). In the
genre mechanism, these corpses function primarily, in Plain’s accurate
assessment, as “instigators of narrative causality” (31), or as the seeds from
which narratives sprout and blossom. Writing in Caracas nearly ninety
years after Van Dine, Argenis Monroy calls the body of the murder victim
the “articulating axis” of the novela negra, or hard-boiled crime novel
(142).2 In a study of literary genres, the Spanish scholar Francisco Javier
Rodríguez Pequeño places the cadaver in second place on his list of the
crime genre’s essential characteristics, which reads as follows: “struggle
between criminal and detective, examination of cadavers, examination of
traces, study of the victim’s environment, psychological analysis of the
suspects, interrogations, investigations” (160). Another Spanish scholar of
detective fiction, Joan Ramon Resina, adds that in the entire genre “the
textual operation, as the manifestation of a (hermeneutic, demythifying,
critical) power, demands a cadaver” (79). Resina explains that “the opacity
of death disrupts narrative order, founded on the promise of transpar-
ency” (74), and so impels repetition of the investigative rite.
Resina and Ernest Mandel provide two of the most eloquent accounts
of importance of death and the cadaver in crime fiction. According to
Mandel, “the real problem of the classical detective novel is not crime at
all—and certainly not violence or murder as such. It is rather death and
mystery” (27). But unlike “great literature” from Sophocles to
Dostoyevsky, in which a “preoccupation with human destiny” motivated
dramatization of murder (41), Mandel argues that detective fiction served
in bourgeois culture merely to schematize and de-personalize intractable
philosophical questions, contributing to a “de-humanization of death”
(42). He explains:
crime story requires a particular kind of fear of death, one that clearly has its
roots in the conditions of bourgeois society. Obsession with death seen as an
accident leads to obsession with violent death, and hence to obsession with
murder, with crime. […] death in the crime story is not treated as a human
fate, or as a tragedy. It becomes an object of enquiry. It is not lived, suffered,
feared or fought against. It becomes a corpse to be dissected, a thing to be
analyzed. Reification of death is at the very heart of the crime story. (41–2)
In the vortex of his disappearance, the victim is the textual place of suction of
meaning. Death, which from the perspective of the criminal is […] useful to
rationality and meaning, is revealed in the victim to be incommensurable
with any form of appropriation. Pure fact and radical alterity, death is an
active preterition; as such it is unapproachable through the intellectual or
aesthetic modes of presentism: contemplation, description, representation.
[…] The pure appearance of disappearance fascinates with the horror of
forms that escape the finitude of the concept and negate that which names
INTRODUCTION 7
them: the face softened by salt water and devoured by fish, the brutally invag-
inated abdomen, the wizening of the members in the escape of fluids and the
dissipation of humidity. This horror is not the repugnance of the sensitive,
but vertigo from the transience of the categories under which what is now
present as non-face, non-belly, non-body had been comprehensible. (76)
Resina goes on to observe that in crime narrative the figure of the victim
poses a destabilizing resistance to comprehension and a sense of radical
defamiliarization that demands a hermeneutic response on the part of the
perplexed subject (77).
In these passages, Resina refers to the victim, one vertex of the triangle
of character positions that structures the conventional crime novel
(detective-victim-criminal). However, for the purposes of this study, I will
presume to retain a number of these insights while substituting his term
“victim,” with its reference to an act of killing or wounding, with my pre-
ferred term “cadaver,” in order to emphasize the attribute of deadness as
the catalyst of the radical defamiliarization and the suction of meaning to
which Resina refers. In the course of his book, Resina appears to use the
two terms somewhat interchangeably, as when he crafts other fine phrases
on the crucial function of the cadaver:
Inverted epiphany, the cadaver opens a void at the scene of the crime.
Fleeting body and, nevertheless, cardinal point of a space whose topography
it recomposes by virtue of its disappearance. (143)
[I]n that the detective story traces the uncovering of hidden facts about an
event of death […] what it in fact must solve is death itself. The dead woman
who remains and in so doing engenders narratives, functions as a body at
which death is […] coupled to the other central enigma of Western cultural
representation—femininity. The solution of her death is a form of docu-
menting both of these unknowns. The dead woman, embodying a secret,
harbours a truth others want and since the dead body is feminine, with
death and femininity metonymies of each other, the condensation of the two
allows one and the same gesture to uncover a stable, determinate answer for
this double enigma. (Bronfen 293)
In the chapters that follow, I will devote most of my critical effort to elu-
cidating the responses of male characters to confrontations with female
corpses and the disavowal of implication in the twin enigmas through for-
mulaic genre procedures and subjective attitudes.
Millions of readers recognize the centrality of murder and hence of the
cadaver in the crime genre, in both its classical “mystery” and its later
hard-boiled variants. The commercial propagation of the genre depends
on the reliable fulfillment of readerly expectations, and even today very
few aspiring or established genre writers would disobey Van Dine’s sev-
enth commandment. Many other critics have also recognized the mecha-
nisms described by Mandel and Resina, although few have addressed them
with such critical acumen. Gary C. Hoppensand, for one, defined the mys-
tery genre as “a collection of formulas and sub-formulas that linearly tra-
verse moral explorations of the human death crisis” (quoted in Colmeiro
51), but it seems reasonable to agree with Mandel that such “moral explo-
rations” as are undertaken by the crime novel rarely aspire to a genuine or
profound psychological and philosophical reckoning with death. Such a
reckoning would remain for Mandel the work of “great literature,” which
is to say literature that refuses the crutch of genre “solutions” and adapts
its language, narrative form and enunciative structures creatively to the
rigors of the intellectual task. Serial and generic crime novels seem, in
contrast, designed to domesticate and to trivialize the “human death
INTRODUCTION 9
c risis” rather than to confront it soberly. The classical detective novel that
triumphed internationally in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies was particularly resolute in its determination to engage death neatly
and dispassionately as a “thing to be analyzed,” and in the most formulaic
iterations of the genre, the corpse appeared as troublesome and intrusive,
but ultimately as not much more affecting than a tea stain on a doily. In
the words of Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges, the most illustri-
ous promoters of the classical detective genre in Latin America, “[e]ven
death is discreet in detective stories; although it is never absent, although
it tends to be the center and the occasion for the intrigue, it is not exploited
for morbid delectation” (67).
Over the course of the twentieth century, however, crime fiction tended
to lend the cadaver an ever greater narrative prominence and dramatic
weight and invited ever more insistently the morbid delectation that
Borges disdained. In “The Simple Art of Murder” (1944), one of the
most famous essays on the hard-boiled variant of the detective genre,
Raymond Chandler sought to differentiate between the classical and the
hard-boiled detective novel by claiming that the latter “gave murder back
to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a
corpse” (16). Rather than dispensing with the task of providing a corpse,
however, hard-boiled fiction embraced and fulfilled it with unprecedented
and increasingly shameless gusto, its pretension to realism tempered by an
increasingly violent and pornographic sensationalism. One of the principle
distinctions between the classical detective novel and the hard-boiled is
precisely the latter’s abandonment of the hygienic discretion with which
classical detective fiction had treated the central cadaver. In the decades
since the invention of the hard-boiled genre in the 1920s, and with the
rapid relaxation of cultural taboos and censorship after mid-century, hard-
boiled fiction lost its few inhibitions, and its horror intensified. English
scholar Lee Horsley observes that the hard-boiled fiction of our time is
“more likely to be strewn with ‘semiotic’ bodies, fragmented, grotesque,
gruesome” (118).
If the hard-boiled is defined in part by its distinctively detailed descrip-
tion of violently degraded cadavers, then nearly all the texts I will discuss
in this book are hard-boiled to some degree. They vary strikingly, how-
ever, with respect to another norm of the hard-boiled novel: reliance on
the physically and intellectually powerful figure of the detective protago-
nist to counteract the menace posed by the cadaver. According to genre
conventions (as summarized, again, by Rodríguez Pequeño), examination
10 G. S. CLOSE
Craig (Frank E. Smith), in which a man dressed in a blazer and hat stands
casually staring down at the naked corpse of a red-haired woman. The
corpse’s red lipstick and a stray red high-heeled shoe attest to the cover’s
identification of the murder victim as “the girl who had shocked Greenwich
Village with her exotic life and loves.”
The corpse (or cadaver: cadere, to fall), that which has irremediably come a
cropper, is cesspool, and death; it upsets […] violently the one who con-
fronts it as fragile and fallacious chance. A wound with blood and pus, or the
sickly, acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence
of signified death—a flat encephalograph, for instance—I would under-
stand, react, or accept. No, as in true theater, without makeup or masks,
refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live.
These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly
and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, I am at the border of my
condition as a living being. My body extricates itself, as being alive, from
that border. Such wastes drop so that I might live, until, from loss to loss,
nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit—cadere,
cadaver. […] [T]he corpse, the most sickening of wastes, is a border that has
encroached upon everything. It is no longer I who expel, ‘I’ is expelled.
How can I be without border? […] In that compelling, raw, insolent thing
in the morgue’s full sunlight, in that thing that no longer matches and
therefore no longer signifies anything, I behold the breaking down of a
world that has erased its borders: fainting away. The corpse, seen without
God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting
life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from
which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanni-
ness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us. (3–4)
The corpse is detective fiction’s first and only object, its defining obstacle: the
veil of matter whose piercing, with the help, it may be, of archives and labo-
ratories, announces that gnosis has begun. […] Is she, or he [the “cognitive
hero”], subject enough to survive? Fictional detectives have to be more char-
acterful than fictional spies or fictional cowboys: interiority is expected of
them. They go to work with their subjecthood, and on their subjecthood, for
they must not be deflected from the hermeneutic endeavors […]. The subli-
mation which converts a dead body into a set of clues significantly prefigures
the detective’s long and arduous sublimation of his or her own body: of
desire and rage, of fear and loathing. (“Fascination and Nausea” 27)
Kristeva argues that only certain brave and ingenious male writers, includ-
ing Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Louis Ferdinand Destouches), James Joyce
and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “are prepared or able to put their symbolic posi-
tions [their positions as proper subjects in a phallocentric symbolic order]
at risk by summoning up the archaic traces of their repressed semiotic and
maternal prehistory [and] to evoke […] this maternal space-time and […]
unspoken pre-oedipal pleasures” (Gross 98–9). In what follows, I shall
describe an international tradition of cowardly and conformist masculinist
genre novels that do approximately the opposite. By imagining the
mortification of sexualized female bodies and the incision and extirpation of
their sexual organs, these novels symbolically enact time and again a vindic-
tive and illusory refusal of what Gross memorably calls the “unpayable
debt” of the male subject to the maternal body, but also more generally of
the corporeality and materiality that negates the permanence and autonomy
of that subject just as surely as does its origin in the womb of another being.
After reading novel after novel and watching television show after film
in which almost invariably male serial killers and traditionally male forensic
examiners rip into female breasts, vaginas and uteruses, I have found no
more profound explanation for the endless proliferation of sadistic misog-
ynist rage in global popular fiction than Kristeva’s insight into the link
between revulsion at signs of sexual difference and an abject that threatens
the male subject with the disavowed knowledge of its own corporeal ori-
gin in female genitive power. Kristeva understands art and literature as
important vehicles for the sublimation of our awareness of the abject
18 G. S. CLOSE
overing at the bounds of our subjectivity, but her theory provides special
h
insight into the operation of a genre of literature, that of hard-boiled
crime fiction, which she does not consider. If Kristeva’s abjection is, as
Gross summarizes, “an insistence on the subject’s necessary relation to
death, to animality, and to materiality, being the subject’s recognition and
refusal of its corporeality” (89), we can also easily recognize those ele-
ments as fundaments of the hard-boiled genre. And, following Trotter, we
can equally well understand how setting a fictional male detective the task
of overcoming abjection could only result in the need to repeat the exer-
cise indefinitely, generating endless series of novels, novel collections, tele-
vision shows and films. The Kristevan abject is, after all, nothing if not a
persistent and recurring threat, and even as we seek to harness symboli-
cally the unclean and the improper in order to construct and maintain our
own clean and proper identities, Kristeva argues, we remain at once
attracted and repelled by the abyss of nonidentity, which is ultimately
impossible to close. “The subject’s recognition of this impossibility,”
Gross concludes, “provokes the sensation and attitude that [Kristeva] calls
abjection” (87), and I would argue that genre literature’s implicit recogni-
tion of the same impossibility explains the incessantly serial nature of the
hard-boiled enterprise and the usually scant, ephemeral satisfaction
afforded by the narrative conclusion of any given hard-boiled text.
Morbid Spectacularity
Philosophers and theorists of new media have proposed that we inhabit an
emerging regime of total visibility (Rancière 104, Agre 751). Ours is a
globalized visual culture, and we live immersed in a proliferation of digital
images that afford us visual access to spaces as remote as galaxies billions
of light years away and spaces as intimate as the cavities and channels of
our bodies. Already in the 1980s, years before the invention of digital
social networks and video-capable smartphones, the art historian W. J.
T. Mitchell observed that “[e]verything—nature, politics, sex, other peo-
ple—comes to us now as an image, preinscribed with a speciousness that
is nothing but the Aristotelian ‘species’ under a cloud of suspicion” (30).
Mitchell’s observation follows by almost twenty years after the famous first
thesis of Guy Debord in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): “The whole life
of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail pres-
ents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was
directly lived has become mere representation” (12, italics in original).
INTRODUCTION 19
Although Žižek does not clarify his reference to “snuff films,” I would add
to his list of seemingly raw and real yet digitally mediated spectacles the
genre of the “found footage” horror film, televised “Ultimate Fighting”
events and, of course, execution videos distributed globally online. In the
20 G. S. CLOSE
[C]ontemporary media continue to invest heavily in, and rely for their pop-
ularity on, extreme levels of physical violence, collateral damage and destruc-
tion, psychological terror and emotional conflict […]. Nothing, it seems, is
too gut-wrenchingly cruel, inhumane, abominable or intimate that it could
not flicker over the screen; and the internet has extended the opportunities
to show (and tell) it all by circumventing the somewhat porous boundaries
of state media control. It has fuelled the spiral of spectacularisation of ( re)
presentation and the interconnected (trans)formation of viewing behaviour,
conventions and expectations, and driven obscenity to new levels. Excess
violence, destruction and death cease to represent or mean anything.
Obscenity thus marks a state of total exhibition. (“AES+F” 107)
pride. With its gloomy alarmism and its antiprose, the nota roja is an ideal
channel for understanding the inner workings of the country, certain ways
in which conflicts are always resolved or in which, with astonishing fre-
quency, people go over the edge. (“Ustedes que jamás” 11)
Since these words were first published in 1973, the virulent growth of
Mexican organized crime and its continued penetration of the nation’s
political, judicial and security institutions have only increased the relevance
of Monsiváis’s diagnosis. In the same period, the new digital communica-
tions technologies have facilitated the decentralization and decensorship
of information and image production and distribution to the extent that
the criminal organizations can mount their own internationally visible
campaigns of digital terrorist propaganda.
In recent decades, the most infamous of Mexican nota roja print publi-
cations has been El Nuevo Alarma! Until its editor’s death prompted
its definitive closure in 2014,6 this tabloid specialized in the same genre of
extremely gruesome cadaver photographs as the Blog del Narco. Five years
after the original Alarma! was shut down by the Mexican government in
1986, El Nuevo Alarma! resumed the original publication’s mission of
presenting the rawest possible coverage of Mexico’s weekly disasters. It
retained the basic design of the original, featuring extremely graphic
crime- and accident-scene photographs, shriekingly large font, all-caps
headlines and black and bright-yellow type on white newsprint. (This
color scheme, adopted by copycat publications as well, supported usage of
the term prensa amarrillista or “yellowist press” to designate this most
sensationalist variant of the nota roja.)7 Whereas the original Alarma! fea-
tured a centerfold of bikini-clad women, both the print edition and the
website of El Nuevo Alarma! carried more explicitly pornographic features
such as topless pin-up photographs and a “Sexión del placer!” (“Pleasure
Sextion!”) that reported feverishly titillating sex news. These followed
pages of crime and accident stories illustrated with color photographs of
cadavers in nearly every state of injury and mutilation imaginable.
To explain the broad popular appeal of a publication that claimed hun-
dreds of thousands and later millions of readers, art critic and historian
Cuauhtémoc Medina quotes Carlos Monsiváis’s observation that the hor-
rors of Alarma! provided a form of consolation to Mexican readers by
proving to them every week that “no matter how miserable you are, some-
one else is even more miserable” (quoted in Medina 25). In other essays,
Monsiváis elaborated on this point, stating that in violent urban societies
24 G. S. CLOSE
Nearly the entire Alarma! cover is devoted to the news of the murder
of an American nightclub dancer, Laurelle Ann Marchant, who died in her
Mexico City apartment in 1985. The headline in large black type reads
“BAILARINA TORTURADA, VIOLADA Y AHORCADA!” (“dancer
tortured, raped and strangled!”) and it appears above three color photo-
graphs of the victim. In the two lateral pictures the blonde victim appears
26 G. S. CLOSE
in life, posing once in a tight-fitting and low-cut leotard, and once in high-
cut shorts, and the redundant captions under these pictures state that “she
looked very beautiful” and “this is what she was like alive.” Between these
pictures, and dominating the layout, there appears a larger close-up pic-
ture of the murdered woman’s head in profile, with the strap or cord used
to strangle her still wrapped around her neck. The caption announces
what is also clearly visible in the photograph, that the murderers had
stuffed her underwear into her mouth to gag her (“EN LA BOCA LE
PUSIERON ROPA INTIMA”). A text box in smaller type running across
the top of the page identifies the victim as an American and refers to her
by her first name only, while two lower text boxes proffer additional details
to seduce potential readers: that the murderers forced the victim to
INTRODUCTION 27
dance for them before killing her, and that the cadaver was found nude.
This last emphatic proclamation (“EL CADAVER ESTABA DESNUDO!”)
runs in yellow capital letters on a black bar along the bottom of the cover
and introduces a motif that is strikingly prominent in a series of novels that
I will study in this book.
In its totality, the design, text and photographs of this Alarma! cover
provide a perfect synthesis of the nota roja’s clamorous appeal to morbo
and of the necropornographic aesthetic whose literary manifestation I will
explore here. Medina has written insightfully of the staunchly conservative
moralism that characterized crime reporting in both versions of Alarma!,
pointing out that despite its savage visual rhetoric, the tabloid’s writers
presented its hair-raising stories as morality tales in which deviations from
traditional family values resulted in the most devastating consequences
(21, 26). In this moral view, victims are often as guilty as their assailants,
and this is especially true when any kind of perceived sexual immodesty is
inferred on the part of the victim. With regard to the Alarma! cover
design described above, we may conclude that it provides all the informa-
tion the reader presumably needs to form a judgment about Marchant’s
murder: she was blonde, beautiful and American, and she danced in clubs
for money wearing revealing outfits, so the reader is invited to share in the
pleasure of imagining her rape and murder. While the social projection of
the nota roja may exceed that of the crime novel, it is clear that in various
respects these two forms of textual production function in harmony and in
tandem, exploiting the same sensational topics and feeding the same pub-
lic appetites. The 1952 Dell edition of Turn on the Heat, written by Erle
Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym A. A. Fair, visualizes a scene very
comparable to the central Alarma! image: that of a beautiful blonde
woman being strangled (rather than already strangled to death), in a frame
that crops her figure midway down her naked breasts. This image repre-
sents, again, no deviant niche of literary culture. A lawyer and progressive
legal activist in his extraliterary life, Gardner was, like Spillane, “for many
years one of the most popular writers in the world—possibly the most
popular,” and he contributed more stories than anyone else to the original
hard-boiled pulp magazine Black Mask (Server 109). In the coming chap-
ters, we shall see that the sexual ideology of the classical hard-boiled novel
is no less conservative, moralizing and misogynistic than that of the nota
roja and that it is perpetuated at times even by authors whose political
views are in other respects leftist and progressive.
28 G. S. CLOSE
Notes
1. And indeed, the Ripper episode of Kolchak may well have borrowed a nar-
rative formula (that of the serial killing of beautiful, sexually adventurous
women) from earlier giallo films in which the murderer was identified, as in
the Kolchak episode, by his black leather gloves while his face remained
concealed from the viewer. Beginning in the mid-1960s, “the fascination
with murdering beautiful women” emerged as “one of the most important
traits of these Italian thrillers” (Bondanella 390). Although certain giallo
directors such as Dario Argento are commonly associated with horror film,
Leon Hunt suggests that the giallo genre “might usefully be seen between
as the missing link between the protoserial killer narratives of [US hard-
boiled novelists] Frederic Brown and Cornell Woolrich and the American
slasher film of the late 1970s/early 1980s” (71).
2. Except where published English translations are cited in my bibliography, all
translations from Spanish in this book are my own.
3. Here I follow the ideas of Philippe Ariès regarding the transition from a
premodern model of “tame death” to the modern “death of the self.” These
ideas are developed respectively in parts I and II of The Hour of Our Death.
4. For an interpretation of the therapeutic function of the classical “golden-
age” detective novel’s “compulsion to repeat” in relation to the trauma
suffered by the British public during World War I, see Plain (40–2, 53).
5. This image of Carter Brown’s Slightly Dead was kindly provided by the Rare
Books Collection of Monash University Library.
6. El Nuevo Alarma! had suspended print publication and editor Miguel Ángel
Rodríguez Vázquez was reportedly anticipating closure of its website by its
owners when his sudden death accelerated the publication’s disappearance.
Its final issue appeared online in February 2014.
7. Among copycat publications, Cuauhtémoc Medina cites the following:
“Peligro! Realidades y Verdades; Custodia! Únicamente la verdad; Enlace!
Policiaco; and Alerta!” (23).
8. A reproduction of this Alarma! cover appears in an online article by Santiago
Stelley, “El Nuevo Alarma! Is Mexico’s Best Crime Tabloid,” cited in my
bibliography. Although the exact date and issue number are illegible in the
reproduction, the issue appears to be from mid-August 1985, when the
murder was also reported in the US press.
9. “Necropornography” is a term that has been used occasionally in scholar-
ship on representation of the Holocaust. In a dissertation on the use of
Holocaust films in US secondary school education, for example, Mark
34 G. S. CLOSE
CHAPTER VII
“Land ho!” This is a cheering cry at times to the mariner. More especially if
it be the chalky cliffs of Britain bold, and he is just returning from a long
and weary voyage.
It is not so cheering if the ship is out of her course, and the shore looks a
forbidding and inhospitable one, and if soon after this shout you hear
another “Ready about!”
Nor did the looks of these storm-rent and surf-tormented rocks tend to
raise the spirits of the wanderers in the Walrus to a very high degree.
But it was land all the same, and curiosity was excited in the heart of
every one. Even Nick and Nora must stand with their paws on the bulwarks,
and sniff longingly towards it.
As often as not, these islands or islets are enveloped in rain-clouds,
snow-clouds, or fog, the wildest of waves wash their rocky shores, and it
can hardly be said that there is a green thing upon them. But the birds love
them all the same, and find sustenance in the nesting season in various
kinds of algæ or seaweeds, and in the shrimps with which the sea abounds.
A boat or two was lowered, and a landing-place found, and, as usual,
observations and soundings were taken. The glass remained high, and there
was every prospect of fine weather for a day or two at least, so sea-fishing
was gone into with some success, eggs were collected, and made a valuable
addition to the larder.
Then the voyage was continued, and the Walrus made in the direction of
Marion Island, one of the Prince Edward group, lying in the same latitude.
The wind continued fair for a week, but somewhat ahead.
Then one afternoon it blew a little warmer, and veered more to the north.
“I fear we’re in for a blow,” said Captain Mayne Brace’s acting mate.
“Weather looks very dirty, sir, all about. Horizon creeping nearer, wind
coming in nasty puffs, sea with a swell on it, and a falling glass, and——”
“That’s enough, mate; take in sail and reef. Just make her fit to encounter
anything; and, I say”—the mate had touched his cap and was retiring—“I
think we might as well have fires ready to light, in case, you know.”
“Ay, ay, sir. Thank you.”
“Going to be bad weather, captain?” said Ingomar, entering the saloon
just then.
“Not sure. Nothing is certain in these seas. It is dark enough to have the
lights turned on, but that makes things look gloomy when one goes on
deck.”
“Yes; and the sudden transition from bright light to comparative
darkness is certainly somewhat depressing.”
“Anyhow, boys all, there’s two things I don’t mean to do, and one I’ve
made up my mind to. I’m not going to be blown back if I can help it; I’m
not going to waste my precious coals so as to have to burn the bulkheads in
an emergency; and if the wind doesn’t go with me, why, I’ll go with the
wind.”
“Hurrah!” cried Ingomar. “That is capital policy all through.”
The boys clapped their hands, because it occurred to them that it was the
best thing to do.
Everything was conducted during this voyage with the greatest
regularity. The very same precautions as to lights was taken at night—
though small, indeed, was the likelihood of a ship being met—as would
have been observed in steering up or down our own English Channel. There
were three watches, so that, in these inclement seas, the men might not
suffer from fatigue; the temperature of the water and air had to be taken
each watch; the sky and clouds observed, and the force of the wind marked,
etc., and all was logged. Notes were taken even of the appearance of seals
or whales, the flight of birds, the colour of the sea and floating seaweed.
One well-kept log of a voyage is of great use to future mariners who sail the
same seas; from many logs so kept, are deduced about all that science
knows of winds and seas and ocean currents.
In a few minutes after the mate had gone on deck, the ship seemed to
stop suddenly short, to stand suddenly still, and the sails began to flap
uncertainly. There was much confusion now on deck, and slacking off of
sheets and shouting of orders, for the mate knew not from which side the
wind would come next.
Then there was a vivid flash of lightning, which almost blinded the eyes
of those below. Another and another followed quickly, and were succeeded
by louder thunder than most people ever listen to.
Then the wind!
The shifting, ever shifting wind! For the Walrus was in a little cyclone.
Certainly not little as regarded force, but still in extent small enough to be
called a whirlwind. Yet such whirlwinds as these are strong enough to sink
any ship that ever sailed if not most carefully handled.
There was another circular squall after this, then a third and fourth, and
lo! the steady gale came on in earnest, blowing terrifically from the N.N.W.
Now God save the good ship in the darkness of such an awful night as
this!
For the wind brought with it its own waves, its own cold spray, its own
wild showers of driving rain and sleet and hail combined. It brought
something worse—it brought streams of small ice-blocks, and streams of
deep snowy slush, passing through which the ship was strangely steady,
because never a green sea rolled on board.
It is just on such a night as this long and terrible one that, with the
horizon a mere background of blackness to the dimly lighted bulwarks, a
wind that shrieks and howls like wild wolves, a wind that even head down
one cannot face, but must creep side first against, clutching at rope or stay,
and gasping as if engulphed in the dark cold water just beyond; it is on just
such a night as this, I say, that the mariner in these far Southern seas, having
taken in every bit of canvas he can spare, and done his best for his good
ship from bowsprit to glimmering binnacle, must place his trust in
Providence, feeling that he is in the hands of Him who can hold the ocean
in His palm, and bring him safely through the danger.
The captain himself did not come below until the beginning of the
middle watch. He was wet and shiny in his oilskins and sou’wester.
Ingomar had turned in.
The boys had not undressed, but had lain down to talk fearfully, just in
front of the stove, with the dogs their only companions.
They had been especially terrified by the loud rattling of some sails that
had carried away while the gale was still at hurricane force.
“What! not in bed yet, lads?”
“No,” said Charlie. “Fact is, sir, I’d rather be drowned with my clothes
on, and Walt here thinks the same.”
Mayne Brace laughed.
“I can’t blame you, though. I was once young myself. But bustle now,
boys; find your way into the pantry, switch on the light, and see what you
can find to eat.”
This was very cheering language, not only because they knew that the
captain would not think of having supper, if he thought the ship was going
down an hour or so after, but because they themselves were hungry enough
to swallow an octopus.
An exciting night of storm has always that effect on the seafarer.
Charlie with the cold beef, Walter with sardines, onions, bread, and
butter, soon staggered out of the pantry again, and as speedily returned for
knives and forks, and plates, and cruets, and dainty sauces.
There was hot coffee in an urn over the stove, and preserved meat; and
what a glorious supper they did make to be sure! You would not have said
that there was a deal of funk about those boys’ hearts had you seen them ply
their knives and forks. But the funniest thing about the matter was this—
hardly had they got settled down to serious eating before a state-room door
opened, and lo! behold Ingomar in the robes of night (pyjamas) standing
swaying and smiling, and holding fast to the bulkhead.
“I’ll join you, if you please,” said Ingomar.
And he did with a hearty good will too. The dogs, of course, partook of
the banquet.
The boys felt happy and a bit drowsy after this, and turned in.
Storm still raging next morning. Uncomfortable motion. Wind still more
to the north, and ship lying-to almost under bare poles.
And so it blew and blew on and off for well-nigh a week.
Then surcease of a storm and tempest, such as it is the experience of but
few to face at this season of the year in these lower latitudes.
And where were they now? Why, still in the longitude or meridian of the
Crozet Islands, but, despite their well-conducted war with the elements,
several degrees further south. In very truth, they might just as well have
sailed here to Enderby Land straight from Kerguelen.
Everybody was pleased one beautiful morning to find that wind and sea
had both gone down. It was nice to sit down to a warm and comfortable
breakfast, without fear of having the lower extremities parboiled with hot
coffee.
The boys had had their sea-water bath this morning early at wash-decks
time. This consisted simply in rushing forward, jumping, and skylarking
like white savages, and having the hose played on them. But it made them
hungry.
Forward, the men’s talk was chiefly about the recent heavy weather.
“Joy to you, Jack,” said Dumpty to a companion, “but this doesn’t seem
much like getting round the globe, do it?”
“It don’t, Dumpty, and that’s a fact,” was the reply. “But it’s all in the
voyage, little ’un, and the more months the more cash, and that’s how I
looks at it.”
The captain’s face and Ingomar’s too were wreathed in smiles as they sat
down to the good things sent forward.
“Seems,” said the former, “we’re going to go zigzagging round the
world.”
“Yes. Going to resume your course now?”
“No; the wind brought us here. I’ll forego the Marions now, and bear up
for the Boukets and Lindsays, weather permitting; but not until we now
have a look at the country the storm has been unkindly enough to drive us
to nolentes volentes.”
“I wonder where the Sea Elephant is about this time?”
“Ah, it would be hard to say, but the gale that we encountered, if it has
passed far on to the east, would have been more favourable for them, and
they are now in open seas off Budd or even Knox Land. They’ll beat us in
the race round the world, you’ll find.”
Every one had the greatest faith in the sturdy old Walrus, for icebergs to
her were nothing, so long as she did not get into a powerful squeeze.
The “ice blink,” a reflection like snow on the horizon over the pack, was
seen that forenoon early, and Mayne Brace headed away directly for it. He
judged himself to be about the longitude of Cape Anne, and he was right.
Young sailors like Charlie and Walt wondered a little that they did not
sooner come into fields of slush and streams of smaller ice, that of broken-
up floes and hummocks.
“The reason is simply this, boys,” said the skipper. “That kind of stuff
has all been hurled back to the edge of the pack on the main barrier of ice
by the force of the northerly wind.
“This land-ice is quite different,” he continued, “from any you have ever
encountered in the North Pole regions. Our earlier navigators in their tubs
of ships sighted it, and some of them sailed along its edge for hundreds of
miles; and as they could find no inlet before they were driven off by storms,
they jumped to the conclusion that this great barrier, this solid, cliff-like
wall of blue or green or striated ice, hundreds of feet in height at some
places, went all around the Antarctic, warning them that thus far might they
come but no farther.”
“But what, then,” said Charlie, “do you mean by land-ice? I’m all in a
fog.”
“Well, lad, you must first imagine a time in the remote ages when this
great unknown Antarctic continent was a land of mountain, forest, and
flood, with rivers finding their way down very extensive valleys to pour
their bright waters into the sea. Imagine, too, if you please, that these
beautiful valleys were in ages far remote from ours clad in verdure, in
jungle, heath, and forest, and that a fauna distinct from ours existed here,
that immense mammoths and mastodons dwelt here, and mayhap flying
alligators, though probably no other creature at all bearing any resemblance
to the form of human beings.
“Then let this age pass out of your mind, and another and colder period
slowly commence—a glacial period, for instance, during which the rivers
and lakes were frozen, and there was no more rainfall, because the mists or
dews driven over yonder continent were then condensed, and fell as snow.
The long storms of winter would soften and the snows melt somewhat
during the Antarctic summer, to form ice again when the dark, wild weather
returned. So the valleys would be partially filled up with great glaciers.
These must move down towards the sea, though extremely slowly—broad
Mississippis of ice and snow. When this so-called land-ice reached the
water, it would form a barrier, and monster bergs would get detached and
float away, leaving the striated cliffs with their wave-washed caves at the
edge. In the gigantic, snow-covered, square blocks that float away on the
currents of ocean, these caves form archways, so that you can sometimes
see right through the bergs, or even sail a boat through them.
“Well, that is land-ice, but the sea-ice is formed of something like the
same pancake and hummocky ice we find in the far, far north, and the
peculiarity of the Antarctic seas of ice is this—the land-bergs, if I may so
call them, often get embedded or entangled in pack-ice, high above which
their great bulk heaves, as towers a ship of battle above a tugboat or dinghy.
In course of time the land-bergs are hollowed and tunnelled by the waves
on which they float, till they break-up, or divide, forming the strangest-
shaped pieces imaginable.
“Another thing which proves that a long way into the interior of this
South-polar region land extends is this—débris of earth and blocks of rock
are brought down on the glacier that, as an examination of the sea’s bottom
proves, could have descended in no other fashion.”
“It is all very wonderful!” said Charlie.
“I wonder,” said Walter, “if any mermaids dwell in these caves of ice?”
Captain Mayne Brace smiled and answered.
“I hope,” he said, “to give you an opportunity of discovering for
yourself, my dear boy.”
But the Walrus reached the pack of sea-ice at last; and the sight, though
not perfectly new to mariners who had sailed the Arctic seas, was at least
very wonderful, and had a cold kind of beauty about it, which it is difficult
indeed to describe.
And far, far away in the interior, mountains covered with everlasting
snow raised their great peaked heads on the horizon.
No life?
Well, no animals, not even a leopard, seal, or sea-elephant, but droves of
droll penguins, standing on end, and looking, at a distance, for all the world
like a crowd of lazy boys just let loose from a Sunday school, who had been
warned not to soil their clothes by romping.
CHAPTER VIII
The hummocks in this pack were not like those in Greenland seas, which
are generally rounded off by wind and snow. These were more like pieces
of ice set on end, and were of every conceivable shape or form.
But not far away from the sea-edge was a most gigantic fellow of a land-
iceberg. It was quite as large as five and forty St. Paul’s Cathedrals formed
into one. Peaked here and there it was too, and the outlines of these peaks
were rounded off with snow.
It was evident that this magical monster had been to sea a time or two,
and that, moreover, he would go north again on the first chance, quickly
dashing aside the pigmies that now impeded his progress, forced along by
wind and current.
The Walrus lay-to off the pack-edge for a day or two, that observations,
soundings, and a survey of the sea’s bottom, etc., might be taken. For
Mayne Brace did not mean to work through at present, and risk the chance
of being beset.
But boats were sent off, that our heroes, and even the dogs, might have a
scamper.
Though too rough for ski, or snow-shoe travelling, the ice-pieces were
pretty close together, and it was easy for everybody to leap from one to the
other, and so on and on till at long last they reached the berg, and made an
attempt to get to the summit. This was much harder than was at first
expected, especially for the dogs, but these were determined to follow their
leader; and so, often stumbling, sometimes slipping, many down again, they
struggled on until they got to the top.
They had their snow-shoes over their backs, and although there was
some danger of their going over a cliff or icy precipice, they enjoyed an
hour’s really good fun. They would have tarried here much longer, but
noticed that the signal for recall had been hoisted; and so, as soon as they
had erected a pole, with a round black ball on the top, and the name of the
vessel cut in the handle, they started to retrace their steps.
The hoisting of the pole took a longer time than they had reckoned on,
for they had to cut the hard surface of the snow first with their Jack-knives,
and get the dogs to complete the excavation with their busy fore-feet. This
they encouraged them to do by pointing to the hole and saying “Rats!”
Now, I don’t believe that either Nick or Nora expected to find a rat in
such a place, but that they merely worked away to please the boys.
None too soon did they reach the boats, for lo! the ice was opening, and
the small bergs getting farther and farther apart. As it was, one man
received a ducking which he would remember till his dying day.
If a strong current ran under the ice, it would have been easy for it to
have carried him away. In Greenland seas there is extra danger in such an
immersion, for sharks are always on the watch there when men are on the
ice, and no one would care to be made a meal of by these scaly monsters.
Two boats had come on shore, and, as usual in such cases, a race was got
up—and oh, there is no race so exciting as that between real sailors with
good honest broad-beamed boats. Ingomar offered as a prize a bottle of rum
and pound of “baccy” to the winning whaler. So the men must even doff
their heavy jackets to the work.
Noticing what was up, all hands on board crowded into the rigging, and
small innocent bets were made, such as clay pipes or postage stamps that
had only been once in use.
The men in each boat were about equal in weight. Charlie was cox’n of
one, Walt of the other, and Hans himself gave the signal.
Then, had you been there, you might have heard such shouts or
encouraging words from the boys to their crews as—
“Up with her now!”
“Cheerily does it!”
“Hurrah, men! Hurrah!”
“We’re winning!” from Charlie.
“We’ll beat them, boys!” from Walter.
“Touch her up!”
“Merrily goes it!” etc.
And Walt’s boat had soon forged ahead at least two lengths, then—
“Now, lads,” roared Charlie—“now, lads, give them fits! We’ve got to
win.”
And on rushed the whalers, every man doing his most.
It was likely, after all, to be a win for Walter, when, unluckily, his boat
touched a bit of green ice, which caused a man to catch a crab, and, with a
loud cheer from those on board, Charlie dashed madly past, and won by a
length.
Then cheers, loud and long, rose from the rigging, with many a mighty
hurrah, and when Charlie scrambled in-board, he was hoisted and carried
three times round the deck shoulder high, the men singing merrily.
Then the boats were hoisted, with the dogs still in them, and they soon
joined the merriment, you may be sure.
But everybody seemed happier for what was called their spin on shore.
* * * * *
Shortly after this more sail was set, and the vessel headed away for the
west, tack and half-tack, for the wind was not yet fair.
That same afternoon they rounded Cape Anne.
This point of rocky land juts far into the sea here. It is a wonderful sight
in summer when the black rocks stand out and the higher cliffs are still
covered with purest snow.
But what a world of life was here—in the sea, on the cliffs and shore,
where cities of countless, I may say myriads, of birds were built.
Sea-leopards and other phocine creatures were all around in multitudes.
It was determined to risk another lie-to, for the water was too deep to
anchor, and they must not venture near those mountain peaks, for unknown
seas have a disagreeable habit of shoaling suddenly, and if it is not low
water when a ship is stranded, poor indeed is her chance of ever getting off
again.
The day was very long now, but still there was a marvellous sunset to-
night. Strange colours, rubies, greens, and orange, lingered long on the
mountain and snow-cliffs full half an hour after the sun went down. And
after the stars shone out, a quarter moon sailed slowly up, but seemed to
detract in no whit from their wondrous brightness.
High above shone the Southern Cross, a constellation which in this
country can, of course, never be observed. The scene about midnight, when
Ingomar and the boys came up to have a last look at it before turning in,
might well have been called solemn, but for the strange noises which hardly
ever ceased.
Here and there, near to the ship even, was the hissing and hurtling as of a
ship blowing off steam, and looking in the direction from which these came,
great fountains or geysers could be noticed in the pale light. Whales were
blowing. Other sounds, and sighs, and cries, and snortings, and moanings
were incessant, and now and then long-drawn cries, proceeding whence or
from what no one could ever guess.
For the rocks were covered with skuas, cormorants, and many a curious
bird never met with in Northern waters.
“Do these creatures never sleep, I wonder?” asked Charlie.
“Hardly ever in early December,” said Captain Mayne Brace, who stood
near him, “because, Charlie, this is the season of love and joy, and the
shores are covered with nestlings, who would hardly permit their parents to
sleep, if they wished to.”
“But I suppose they sleep sometimes?”
“They just have a nap or a nod or two now and then, when Nature won’t
be denied any longer.
“But I say, boys, there is no reason why you should sit up all night, even
if yonder birds and beasts do. Off with you and turn in.”
Charlie’s sleep was very dreamful that night, and so was Walter’s too.
But what they had seen the day before was nothing to the sights that met
their gaze next morning when the boats landed.
They had been told to land on a white tongue of land where penguins
were marching about and sea-leopards lolling in the sunshine, half-standing
on their flippers to stare at the advancing boats, scratching themselves, and
assuming the most ridiculous attitudes imaginable.
They had the pleasure of seeing several whales, and it was well they did
not come into anything like close contact with these, or a nasty capsize
would have been the consequence.
The seals were not a bit afraid of them, and hardly troubled to shuffle
away into the water. Those who did made splendid dives. Charlie could not
help envying them, but he himself would not have cared to dive into so dark
and deep and cold a sea.
Some of the smaller ones were pole-axed (clubbed) because the flesh is
palatable, and fried seal’s-liver and bacon make a capital breakfast dish.
Close to the precipitous ice-cliffs they had been warned not to venture,
and indeed, while gazing and wondering at these as they shone and
shimmered in the sunshine, a terrible explosion took place. High up a
portion of the ice-wall fell, thundering and splashing into the sea, where it
was splintered into pieces.
It fell right into the midst of a portion of water black with the heads of
wondering seals, yet not one floated up dead, so nimbly had they dived
beneath.
The camera-men and general observation-takers managed to climb a
snowy mountain-peak, and I need hardly say that our heroes formed three
of the party.
The sight that met their gaze from this lofty altitude, was one which once
seen could never be forgotten.
Let those who tell us that scenery of Antarctic ice is dead and
monotonous come here. Here was no monotony, and they could see to such
a distance icebergs, small and great, afloat on the blue ocean (the sky was
blue); an island or two on
HE HAILED THE QUARTER-DECK
Page 164
the horizon of the north; to the south and west a long stretch of hilly shores,
with snow-whitened, rugged peaks, little ice, big ice, ice of every form or
shape that could be imagined, clouds and cloudlets in the sky, rolls of
cumulus, lines of stria and patches of cirrhus. As for life, that was
everywhere beneath them. Such crowds of beautiful sea-birds, especially
gulls, had never before been witnessed, and the water was alive with life.
“Look, oh look!” cried Charlie, pointing to a particular spot just beneath.
Here was a strange-looking monster, indeed—a real live sea-elephant,
called so from the length of his proboscis. But king of the seas he is here,
and other seals were crowding round him as if taking counsel, or—what is
more probable—to scare him away by the might of their numbers. But he
dashed them proudly away and soon disappeared. Like the great bladder-
nose of the Arctic, he is a rather lonesome animal, and prefers to be.
With their lorgnettes they could see from such a height as this far down
into the sea-depths. It was a busy time with the sea-leopards, for they were
teaching their puppies how to swim with grace and celerity, and how long
to stay below before Nature craved for a mouthful of fresh air. Some of
them held their offspring between their flippers, and these were evidently
giving suck.
Luncheon was partaken of, about 1700 feet above the sea level.
Lanes of water, south and west, could be seen penetrating into loughs or
inland seas; but on this being reported to Captain Mayne Brace, he decided
not to explore.
Lest I forget it, I should mention here, that the huge iceberg, on which
the signal broom was hoisted, near to Cape Anne, was encountered far to
sea many months after this by the Sea Elephant. The commander was
greatly puzzled, but hauled yards aback and lowered a boat, thinking there
must be shipwrecked men on the berg, part of the crew of some other
expedition. They were even more puzzled when they found the name
Walrus burned upon the pole. But this episode served to show the drift of
the ocean current of the wind, for it was found far to the west, between
South Georgia Islands and the great ice-pack.
On their way further to the west, the Walrus encountered weather fair
and fine. They kept inwards, therefore—passing many huge striated
icebergs, some caved, others tunnelled through and through—until they
reached the Bouvet Isles, in latitude about 53° South and longitude 2° to 5°
East.
They are volcanic in origin, as might easily be expected, and were first
discovered by Captain Bouvet, who, however, could give but little account
of them, owing, first to dense fogs, and secondly to the rocky little
uninviting group being so closely packed around with ice-floes.
After seeing all here that could be seen, and catching many specimens of
strange seals, as well as birds, the vessel’s direction was altered from N.W.
to W. by S., and in due time, with few further adventures, and a
considerable deal of monotonous sailing, they reach the Sandwich group,
which lies in from 55° to 60° South and somewhere about 30° to the west.
These islands were all volcanic, as far as could be made out, and, indeed,
in one of them, nearly the farthest north, smoke still issues from a half-
burnt-out cone.
Almost every bottle, as it was emptied, was thrown overboard. After
letters were written, they were corked, waxed, and well sealed. Some of
these, strange to say, were picked up nearly a year afterwards on the shores
of South America. And these, of course, were duly forwarded to England.
Some were, half a year after this, picked up by the Sea Elephant, and
joyful enough were all hands to learn that all was going well on the sister
ship.
* * * * *
West, and away ever west.
West, and still further south; and one morning, when the sun was
unusually bright and clear, Charlie had the satisfaction, from the crow’s-
nest, of discovering mountain peaks ahead.
Unfortunately for our young hero, these had been discovered generations
before his time, else his name would be handed down in ocean history.
Never mind, when he hailed the quarter-deck, Charlie was just as proud
as a pouter pigeon who discovers three eggs in her nest instead of the
legitimate two.
The observations were continued, for science’ sake, and at great risk too,
for half a gale of wind was blowing from the south-east, and the sea roared
wild and angrily, so that to land a boat was impossible.
So no one was sorry when they bade farewell to this strangely
inhospitable group of islands. They were covered entirely with snow, and it
was found from soundings that the bottom around was not of volcanic
formation. This, at all events, was something to know.
They had hardly seen the sun for weeks, fogs prevailed as well as high,
uncertain winds, so that navigation had been considerably impeded.
Just one adventure they had on leaving these islands. Somehow, while
racing about, poor Wallace, the collie, managed to leap clean and clear over
the bows.
Every one loved that dear dog, and he was said to be far wiser and more
sagacious than even Nick himself.
Be this as it may, he had not the same swimming power, and what
followed fully proved this.
A life-buoy was let go almost instanter, and some confusion ensued.
At first it was thought that a lifeboat could hardly live in that wild sea;
but Ingomar himself pleaded with the captain to make the attempt, and the
ship was being stopped, and the men standing by to lower, when the captain
gave the order.
But now comes the strange point. Nick had seen all, and as soon as the
command was given he sped quickly aft and dived overboard.
The collie was far astern; but, rising on the crest of a wave, Nick could
see him, and barked joyously.
It was a sight to see that boat leave the vessel’s side, and to mark the
stern-set faces of her brave British crew. They were only going to save a
dog! Is that what you say, my gentle boy reader? All the more honour to
them for risking their lives in the cause.
They found the dogs at last, the Newfoundland with his head turned
shipward, the collie resting his fore-paws on his strong shoulders.
And when the boat was hoisted, at last, and the lifeboat men, the gallant
dog, and rescued collie, oh, then, I say you ought to have been on board to
listen to the wild cheering, and to see the men crowding forward to caress
the beautiful Nick.
CHAPTER IX
Both Curtis and Ingomar were capital story-tellers or “yarn spinners,” and
the tales they told the boys helped to while away the time on many a
forenight which might otherwise have felt long. I give the following as
specimen; it was told by Curtis:—
“I liked Jack Hardy from the very first day I clapped eyes on him. Had I
got that lad into the British Navy, I should have been proud to have seen
him among his pals drawn up for inspection on the flagship’s deck, first
Sunday after entering. But this young Jack was an American Jack, and his
ship was the bold Iowa, on which my hammock was hung pro temp., and
the time was very shortly after the capitulation or capture of Santiago, and
destruction of the fleet of Cervera.
“The American-Spanish War didn’t last long enough to please me, but it
did rip and rattle and roar in Cuba and all around the island after the first
ship spat angry fire. You shall earn my eternal gratitude, boys, if you bring
any one up with a round turn who dares call it ‘a little war.’ I tell you what
it is, the book isn’t written yet that shall describe one-half the gallant deeds
done by our brave cousins, on land and at sea, during those brief summer
months of eighteen hundred and ninety-eight.
“ ‘The Spaniards never had a chance,’ some may tell you.
“But the Spaniards had, and Admiral Cervera had also; and if his
gunners had been smart and good, and with some degree of dash and go
about them then, with his splendid ships he might have done wonders, and
the war might still be raging.
“ ‘Manaña!’ (ma-nyah-na—to-morrow). ‘Manaña!’ is the beggarly
whine for ever on the lips of the Dons, be they seamen or soldiers.
“But ‘To-day!’ is America’s battle-cry. Jackie just flings off his jacket
and goes at it hammer and tongs, like a true-born Briton. And God give us
gunners, lads, like the Americans, when our own day of battle dawns.
“Well, about Jack Hardy? He was a fine, open-countenanced boy, say
seventeen or a little over. He really hadn’t been a year in the service, hardly
time for some to get used to their sea-legs. But the lad was a sailor already
—you could have told that at a glance—a sailor every inch, from his
purser’s shoes to his broad blue-banded cap and collar, and his cheerful,
willing, brick-dust face. Guess it was his splendid, spreading bare brown
neck that first drew my attention to Jack. Give me a boy, or a dog either,
that has a well-put-on neck; he’s got the sand in him. You can bet your
blouse on that. Take your turtle-necked chap on shore again. He is no good
for the navy, and a turtle-necked dog isn’t worth the price of a rope to hang
him.
“Now, the American man-o’-war’s courtesy is well known, so is my
modesty. But the latter is sui generis. For example, if I required to borrow
money from a friend to get me a dinner, I should never ask for a dollar, if
there was the ghost of a chance of getting a guinea. So when Captain
Hotchkiss, in his kindly way, said to me, ‘Want to do Santiago, do you,
Curtis? Press, eh? Very well, you can choose a man and boy as body-
guard,’ I chose Hardy, and a fine old sailor not long promoted to the rank of
bo’s’n’s mate—the two best hearts in the ship; and the latter, I knew, had
been with Hobson in the Merrimac, and I hoped, therefore, to worm a vivâ
voce yarn out of him before we came off from shore again.
“Now, I had been to Santiago before—years ago—and I rather liked it
then. I can remember it even now as I speak, remember it as a lovely dream,
a romance—with a beautiful Spanish girl in it whom I—— But never mind,
the ruthless fingers of Time have long since torn that leaf from the log of
my young life. But somehow I expected to find Santiago on this bright and
beautiful forenoon, as my boat went dancing over the blue bay, just as I had
left it in the days of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ I had but to close my eyes to see
once more all its greenery and quaintness, with its quiet court-yards where
flowers and fruit trees grew; where, when moon or stars shone bright and
fire-flies rose and fell among the foliage, I used to listen to the tinkle of the
lute—Lucia’s lute, Lucia in robes of white, with dark mantilla thrown
carelessly over her raven hair, and a flower on her breast, a flower I never
left without.
“ ‘I say, bo’s’n’—I had opened my eyes now wide enough—‘I say,
doesn’t the breeze smell rather—er—er—gamey?’
“The good fellow laughed. ‘That it do, sir,’ he said. ‘Santeehager ain’t
what it used to be by a jugful. You’ll find it ain’t the sweetest o’ perfoomery
now. Sometimes it’s wusser’n others. Sometimes, when seven miles at sea,
ye might hang your sou’wester on the perfoom o’ sweet Santeehager!’
“My romance, my dream of fair women fled just then, and didn’t return.
“Well, I have seen a city or two after a siege and bombardment, and I
know as well as anybody how many ‘r’s’ there are in horror, but the sights I
saw that day I had better make no attempt to describe. How American and
Spanish troops could live and laugh in such a place as this, even with
assistance from the bodegas, was more than I could tell. Ruins everywhere,
sometimes whole rows of them, with fallen roofs and blackened rafters;