This is the actual Feghoot for which Brian’s and my Shaggy Dog home page is named. It is by By F. M. Busby based on the character by Reginald Bretnor. It won Fourth Prize in a Feghoot contest (copyright (c) 1973 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1973.) I have always thought it should have done much better.

Ferdinand Feghoot sadly reported the fate of the Reverend Elmo Milldrip to the Peoria Society for the Conversion of Cannibals.

“I told him the Ngusa were utterly unredeemable, but he just wouldn’t listen. God had sent him an infallible ally, John, Lord Greystoke, better known as Tarzan of the Apes, who of course was a real person, very impressive in his lion-skin loincloth. ‘Mr. Feghoot,’ he told me indignantly, when I tried to dissuade them, ‘I am still Lord of the Jungle!’

“Swinging from tree to tree, the three of us reached the Ngusi capital where, behind its thorn boma, the natives were preparing a feast, and Greystoke, seizing a vine, uttered the bloodcurdling battle-cry of the Great Apes and launched himself over their heads. Unhappily, he had put on weight in retirement and the vine broke in mid-air.

Before our horrified eyes, the cannibals slew him, converted most of him into stew, and dried his intestines, with which they restrung a primitive musical instrument. After the ghastly banquet, their Chief started playing it. He played on and on, and poor Brother Milldrip seemed to be hypnotized. He refused to make his escape, and finally I was forced to abandon him there.”

“But why wouldn’t he leave?” asked the Chairman.

“He was not only pious,” replied Ferdinand Feghoot. “He was also a patriot. He must have believed that the Chief meant to play . . . the Tarzan’s tripes forever.”