Governor Mynheer van Stent tells Jim Darrell that his plane cannot cross the mountains.  Two other such aircraft had tried and the pilot’s heads were delivered to the governor by Dyak tribes.  They are responsible for killing men, women and children just for the fun of it.  As usual, their leader is a golden-haired white woman.^[1]

Her husband and daughter were killed, but somehow she became queen of the tribe.  She then ordered all other women in the tribe to be killed leaving her alone with 300 men.

Dr. Beyers met her when he was once captured and forced to do a minor medical procedure on her; and prescribe 2,000 cases of K-Y Jelly.^[2]  The compassionate doctor says, “they should all be wiped out like wild beasts.”

Darrell doesn’t mention that he found a message scrawled on a leaf in blood:  I am an English woman, come and save me.  There was even a diagram of the mountain range and a crude representation of the path which continued on leaf D-8.

Darrell takes off in his plane with a bearer^[3] to find the woman.  The Governor was correct and the plane stalls over the mountains.  Darrell does a controlled crash. Despite the fact that his assistant^[3] has been standing on the goddamn wing holding a strut the whole time, both walk away without a scratch!

The two men are met by the tribe led by a woman “with a crown of the brightest hair which hung down to her waist.  A woman, nude but for a loin cloth.  Two breasts superbly moulded.”  The tribe brought spears to a gunfight, but still manage to take Darrell and his side-kick^[3] hostage.

Back at the tribe’s HQ, the woman gets Darrell alone and tells him her name is Marian Curtis.  She says only two other white men have found her and she killed them both.  So after giving Darrell a “glorious gift”, she must kill him too.  Darrell has a little trouble getting in the mood since he is facing death afterwards.  Marian leaves him, but her daughter Mary Alice secretly brings him some water.  It was she who wrote the loose-leaf note.

That night, the men will drink a love potion and Marian will choose which ones to “favor”. Although with one woman and three hundred men, I doubt a potion is really necessary. As part of the ritual, Darrell will also be “favored.”  And then ripped apart.  Luckily Mary Alice has a plan for them both to escape.

The plan works and they run, chased by Marian and fifty Dylaks.  Just as all is lost, as in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, they run into European forces which mow the brown people down with rifles.^[4]

Meh, more of the same.  I’ll say this — the quality is pretty consistent.

Post-Post:

• ^[1] I’m not sure whether it is racist or anti-racist that the villains in so many of the stories set in South America, Africa, Indonesia or the Middle East turn out to be blue-eyed, blonde white people.  1936, so I’ll assume racist.
• ^[2] No Rx required, but it sounds better that way.
• ^[3] Slave.
• ^[4] Reviewing the clip, I see they were Indian, not European.  Well, under British rule, anyway.
• First published in September 1936.