The Spanish Tornado

 

cover art by A.L.Ripley

Read/Watch 'em In Order #176

Today, we begin a story-by-story look at a randomly chosen issue of Adventure, a pulp known for publishing high quality tales of... well... adventure. We'll be looking at the January 10, 1926 issue. I've had a PDF copy of this one on my tablet for a few months and now don't remember why I chose it particularly. But any issue of Adventure is worth visiting.

The first story is "The Spanish Tornado," by Norman Springer. Springer was a fairly regular contributor to Adventure in the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s. He was also a novelist and screenwriter.

"The Spanush Tornado" is set in 1877 and introduces us to a young merchant service officer named Charles Peace. Peace doesn't have much experience yet and has trouble getting a berth. That changes when he meets Captain Lamont of the ship Oloron. Peace gets the berth because of this name--the superstitious Lamont hopes Peace will bring peace aboard his ship.

Why is Lamont worried that his ship won't be peaceful. It's because his steward--a black man named Jude--is really, really creepy. Jude is said to wield strange powers and seems to have a hold on Lamont.

There's also a woman on board. Lamont's new wife is a the titular Spanish Tornado--a dancer he only recently married.

Peace poo-poos the idea of a magic-wielding steward. But nonetheless, the ship is hit with bad weather, the crew is unhappy and Jude keeps creeping everyone out. Peace gets on Jude's bad side and the steward is soon vowing vengeance from "Ol' Debbil." When we learn Jude's backstory, we get a surprising revelation as to who exactly "Ol' Debbil" is. 

Springer's prose is excellent--he keeps the tension high throughout the story and his descriptive passages are vivid. There's a high-stakes climax and we're kept guessing right up until the end whether something supernatural is going on. 

The drawback in the story is the constant barrage of racial slurs when characters refer to Jude. Of course, this is the way white sailors in 1877 would have referred to him, so its historically accurate. Also, racial stereotypes are not uncommon in older fiction. Usually, I recognize them as a product of the time and enjoy the story I'm reading anyways.  As C.S. Lewis once wrote when talking about reading old books "...their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us." 

This time, the slurs come frequently enough to be a little bothersome. To be fair, the story doesn't suggest that all black men are scary and evil. Jude is scary and evil, but that's just him. His race is used as one way to mark him as an outsider to the rest of the crew, but that once again is an historically accurate aspect of the story. In the end, it's up to each individual reader to decide if the racism presented here is enough to spoil enjoyment of a well-written tale of sailors and (maybe) magic. 

You can decide for yourself about the story by reading it HERE.