Bald Head Island: Chapter 7
My Dear Cousin Chauncey,
By now you have already learned, either through the newspapers’ reporting or over the wireless, about the horrific incident that took place on the island yesterday morning. Although I’d rather hadn’t, I witnessed the tragedy with my own eyes.
As I was taking my customary morning stroll on the golf course I encountered a woman of color who was taking a walk with her children on account of the good weather. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and she told me she was a cook visiting the island in hope of finding employment to practice her trade with one of the better hotels. I wished her the best of luck with her endeavor and we continued on our ways.
Suddenly I heard the woman call out to her little boy. As I turned I saw the child running toward the very water hazard that is home to the terrible reptile. The boy ignored his mother’s warnings and reached the water, where he was greeted by the alligator who most unceremoniously grabbed hold of the child and dragged him into the water, for the second time taking a life in broad daylight, only this time a human life.
I called for help, while at the same time restraining the poor mother, who wanted to follow after her child into the depth to rescue him, clearly an undertaking as doomed as it was dangerous. After coming to her senses poor lady was understandably inconsolable, and her children in a state of shock. Somebody brought her and her children to the club house, and I do not know what happened to them thereafter, but I’m told that a doctor was called and they were subsequently taken to a mainland hospital for treatment.
I immediately sent a man to alert Uncle, who in turn wasted no time to have soldiers begin to drain the water hazard with large steam pumps, while other soldiers armed with rifles set off in canoes in search of the fiendish beast. In the end they recovered the boy’s dead body, badly mauled by the monster’s teeth. Unfortunately they found no trace of the man-killer, who presumably still is at large on the island.
The very same afternoon Senator McBroom made a speech, in which he claimed that the tragedy could have been prevented had an Anschutz-Flaubert device been deployed ahead of time. Placing devices inside the skulls of all the dangerous animals lurking in the wild would clearly be impractical, if not a task worthy a Sisyphus. Instead he suggested the devices be given to children, so as to keep them from ignoring their mothers’ warnings and admonishments. According to the Senator one would only have to pay attention to signs of disposition toward disobedience, and deploy the devices inside the skulls of children displaying such tendencies.
Prompted by McBroom’s call to action, this morning a large contingent of legislators arrived from the capital to jointly draft house- and senate bills to further legislation to legalize deployment of said devices in humans. From what Uncle tells me the Senate bill will widen the scope of deployment from just disobedient children to include other elements that the senators unjustly fear threaten the stability of our society, such as atheists, suffragettes, emancipated slaves, anarchists, union agitators, sodomites and Bolsheviks to name just a few.
Cousin, I need not emphasize how abhorrent such legislation is to me! Using any artifice, whether mechanical or political, in that manner would nullify the free will that God in his grace has granted all men and women, and turn us into mere automatons, slaves to the fashions of society, like the beasts of the Promenade. And quite apart from the conquest and defeat of the free spirit of mankind it further represents a capitulation of ethics to fear and intolerance.
I can also report that Mrs. Spencer was absent at breakfast this morning. In her place was one of Capt. Spencer’s quartermasters, a chap named Sgt. Ellis. He is likable enough, but of course cannot provide the same level of hospitality that Mrs. Spencer so generously extended, and to which I have become quite accustomed.
Anxiously watching developments on the island, I remain yours etc. etc. etc.
Charles B. Beauregard