In Maulmain Fever-Ward

STARTING POINT AND FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES. "The starting point for ‘In Maulmain, Fever-Ward' is in the first four words of the tale: ‘Flood time on Salwin River. ' Flood time! Then the flowers are rioting, the traders are coming in and of course all things else follow.

"Of course, I've read Poe's ‘Descent into the Maelstrom. ' Who has not? I do not believe that had anything to do with my use of the whirlpool in the story. The situation had been created; it was inevitable that the agent of the priesthood of Siva, most subtle of all in the whole world, would bring the two, or the girl, into the folds of the python. But where? Surely, the only place for this to happen was in the profundities of the whirlpool, traditional abode of the mother of all pythons of that whole region. Hence the necessity for the flood itself to climax the action, to form the whirlpool at its most tremendous phase, to take them down. I wasn't thinking of Poe when I sent them down into the abyss. I went with them -- and brought them out.