‘But you said the Muscias—’
‘Ah! The Muscias are to the Horena what the Horena are to the Chapate. Or so they say. Goodnight!’
‘Rapids!’ Ramon called out. ‘Rapids ahead!’
In the two and a half hours since the hover-craft’s dawn departure the Rio da Morte, though flowing at a rate of about fifteen knots, had been almost glassily calm and, although visibility had been poor because of fairly heavy rain, no problems had been encountered. But now conditions had dramatically altered. At first indistinctly through the now sheeting rain, but then suddenly, frighteningly, and all too vividly rocks could be seen, some jagged, some curved, thrusting up from the river bed. For as far as the eye could see hundreds of them spanned the entire width of the river with white-veined, seething water coursing down between them. The hovercraft, throttled back to a point where directional control could just be maintained, was almost at once into this white and seething cauldron.
When Kellner had said that he had some little experience of navigating rapids he had been doing himself less than justice. As far as the untrained observer could see, he was masterly. He was positively dancing a jig at the controls. He no longer had the throttle pulled back but kept altering it between half and full ahead which, considering their speed, might have seemed foolhardy, but wasn’t. By doing this and by ignoring the air ducts and maintaining the cushion pressure as high as possible he could all the more easily avoid making violent course alterations which would have slewed the hovercraft broadside and into disaster. Instead, he was deliberately aiming for and riding his hovercraft over the less fearsome rocks in his path. Even here he had to be selective, searching out the more rounded rocks and avoiding the jagged ones which, at that speed, would have ripped even the abnormally tough apron skirts, leading to the collapse of the cushion and turning the hovercraft into a boat which would then have foundered in short order. One moment he was jerking the pitch control back, putting power on the left fan, then if this proved insufficient, applying right rudder to give him directional stability while only seconds later he had to reverse the procedure. His task was made harder by the fact that even the high-speed windscreen wipers were capable only intermittently of clearing the spray and rain.
Kellner said to Hamilton who was seated beside him: ‘Tell me again about all those boats that were supposed to navigate the Hoehna.’
‘I guess I must have been misinformed.’
Further back in the hovercraft no-one spoke because all their energies were concentrated on hanging on to their seats. The general effect of the motion was that of a roller-coaster—except that this roller-coaster, unlike the fairground type, also shook violently from side to side.
Up front, Kellner said: ‘Do you see what I see?’
Some fifty yards ahead the river appeared to come to an abrupt end. They were obviously approaching a waterfall of sorts.
‘Unfortunately. What are you going to do about it?’
‘Funny.’
The hovercraft was being swept helplessly along to what was indeed a waterfall. The drop in the river level must have been at least ten feet. Kellner was doing the only thing he could do—trying to keep the hovercraft on a perfectly straight course.
The hovercraft swept over the fall, dipped sharply and plunged downwards at an angle of forty-five degrees. With an explosion of sound and spray, the hovercraft momentarily disappeared save for the stern. Not only the bows but part of the front of the cabin had gone completely under and in that way and at that angle the hovercraft remained for several seconds before it slowly struggled to the surface again, water cascading off its decks. It settled deeper in the water, the effect of partially losing its air cushion when the stern had come completely clear of the water.
The interior of the craft was a scene of appalling confusion. The angle of fall and the stunning impact had catapulted everyone to the deck. Equipment which had been stored but not lashed aft was now scattered throughout the cabin. To make matters worse, a window had been smashed and hundreds of gallons of water were sloshing about the interior of the cabin. One by one the passengers struggled upright. They were bruised, dazed and slightly concussed, but there seemed to be no broken bones.
As the air cushion began to fill again and the water gurgled away through the self-draining ports, they could feel the hovercraft rise slowly to its normal position.
Three times in the next few minutes the hovercraft went through a similar experience, although none of the waterfalls were as high as the first time. At last the hovercraft passed into an area of smooth, rock-free water, but it was then that another danger manifested itself. The forested banks gave way to what was at first low rock, which quickly became higher and higher until they were passing through what was virtually a cliff-sided canyon. At the same time the river swiftly narrowed to about a third of its original width and the speed of the river and hence that of the hovercraft rapidly more than doubled.
Hamilton and Kellner stared through the windscreens, glanced at each other, then looked forward again. Ahead, the steep-sided river walls fell sharply away, but this promised no surcease. A quarter of a mile ahead a jumble of huge black rocks blocked the river from side to side.
‘Bloody charts!’ Kellner said.
‘Indeed.’
‘Pity, really. These machines are very expensive.’
‘Make for the left.’
‘Any particular reason?’
‘The Horena live on the right bank.’
‘Left, as the man says.’
The rocks were about three hundred yards away. They appeared to form an impenetrable barrier, no two sufficiently far apart to afford passage to the hovercraft.
Hamilton and Kellner looked at each other. Simultaneously they shrugged. Hamilton turned and faced the rear.
‘Hang on tight,’ he said. ‘We’re about to stop very suddenly.’ He had no sooner spoken than he realised that his warning had been unnecessary. They had seen what was coming up. They were already hanging on for dear life.
The rocks were now no more than a hundred yards distant. Kellner was guiding the craft towards the biggest gap between any two of them, the first and the second from the left bank.
For one brief moment it seemed that the hovercraft might just have one chance of making the passage as Kellner arrowed straight for the centre of the gap. The craft’s bows passed through but that was all: the passage was at least eighteen inches narrower than the midships beam of the hovercraft. With a grinding, screeching tearing of metal, the hovercraft came to an abrupt halt, immovably jammed.
Kellner went into reverse and applied maximum power. Nothing happened. Kellner eased off the fans but kept the engine running to maintain the cushion. He straightened up, muttering to himself, ‘Now with an ocean-going tug …’
Ten minutes later there was a pile of rucksacks, canvas bags and other improvised luggage containers on deck and Hamilton was securing a rope around his waist. He said: ‘It’s only twenty feet to that bank but the water’s mighty fast so kindly don’t let go of the end of that rope.’
It was a danger, but not the only one. Even as he finished speaking there came a sudden grunt and Kellner collapsed to the deck. A dart protruded from the back of his neck. Hamilton swung round.
On the far right bank, less than fifty yards away, stood a group of Indians, ten or twelve in all. Every man had a blowpipe to his mouth.
‘Horena!’ Hamilton shouted. ‘Down! Take cover behind the cabin, inside the cabin. Ramon! Navarro!’
Almost immediately, Ramon and Navarro, all humanitarian principles forgotten at the sight of Kellner, were on the cabin roof, stretched out on their elbows, rifles in hand. More darts struck the metal sheathing but none found a target. In three seconds the twins fired six shots. At five hundred yards either man was accurate. At fifty yards they were deadly. One after another, in those few seconds, three Horena toppled into the river, three others crumpled and died where they stood, and the others melted away.
&nb
sp; Hamilton gazed down in bitterness at the lifeless Kellner. Not for the Horena the use of timbo, the poisonous bark of a forest vine which merely stunned: the dart which took Kellner had been tipped with curare.
Hamilton said: ‘If it weren’t for Kellner we’d all be dead. And now Kellner is dead.’ Without another word he jumped into the river. The only danger here was the speed of the water: neither alligators nor piranha ever inhabit rapids.
At first he was swept downstream and had to be hauled back. On the second attempt he succeeded in reaching the bank. He stood there some time, regaining his breath—the buffeting had been severe—then undid the rope around his waist and secured it to the bole of a tree. Another rope was thrown across to him. This he passed round a branch and threw back to the hovercraft where, in turn, it was passed round a fan bracket and thrown back to Hamilton, forming, in effect, an endless pulley.
The first item of equipment—Hamilton’s own rucksack—was ferried across, well clear of the water, as was all the rest of the equipment. The members of the party had to make it the wet way.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sweat-soaked and stumbling, mostly from near exhaustion, the heavily laden party of nine made their painfully slow way through the afternoon gloom of the rainforest. Even at high noon there was never more than half-light in its depths. The crowns of the great liana-festooned trees stretched out and intertwined a hundred feet or more above the ground, effectively blocking out the sunlight.
Progress was not slow because they had to hack their way with machetes through the dense undergrowth, because of dense undergrowth there was none. For plants to grow at ground-level, sunshine is essential. Jungle, in the true African sense of the term, did not exist. The progress was slow primarily because there was as much swampland as there was firm ground and quicksands were an ever-present peril. A man could step confidently on to what appeared to be an inviting stretch of greensward and on his second step find himself shoulder deep in a swamp. For safe locomotion in the forest, a probe, in the form of a hacked-off and trimmed branch, was essential. For every mile covered as the crow flew, it was not uncommon to have to traverse five miles. That, and the time it took to locate patches of firm ground, made for time-consuming, frustrating and exhausting travel.
Smith, in particular, was making heavy weather of it. His clothes were so saturated with sweat that he might well have just been dragged from the river. His legs had gone rubbery and he was gasping for breath.
Smith said: ‘What the hell are you trying to prove, Hamilton? How tough you are and how out of condition we city dwellers are? God’s sake, man, a break. An hour wouldn’t kill us, would it?’
‘No. But the Horena might.’
‘But you said their territory was on the right bank.’
‘That’s what I believe. But don’t forget: we killed six of their men. Great lads for revenge, the Horena. I wouldn’t put it past them to have crossed the river and be following us. There could be a hundred of them within a hundred yards of here, just waiting to get within blowpipe range, and we wouldn’t know a thing about it until too late.’
Smith, it appeared, was possessed of reserves of strength and endurance of which he had been unaware. He hurried on.
Towards evening, they reached a small and largely swampy clearing. Most of the party were now shambling, not walking.
‘Enough,’ Hamilton said. ‘We’ll make camp.’
With the approach of dusk the forest appeared to come alive. All around them was sound. Mainly, it came from birds—parrots, macaws, parakeets. But there was animal life too. Monkeys screeched, bull-frogs barked and now and again the deeply muffled roar of a jaguar came at them from the depths of the forest.
Everywhere there were creepers, vines, parasitic orchids and there, in the clearing, exotic flowers of almost every conceivable colour. The air was damp and fetid, a miasmic smell all-prevalent, the heat overpowering and leaden and enervating, the floor underfoot almost an unbroken expanse of thick, clinging, evil-smelling mud.
Everyone, even Hamilton, sank gratefully to what few patches of dry ground they could find. Over the river, not much higher than the tree-tops, several birds, with huge wing-spreads, seemed suspended against the sky, for their wings were motionless. They looked evil, sinister.
Maria said: ‘What are those horrible-looking creatures?’
‘Urubus,’ Hamilton said. ‘Amazonian vultures. They seem to be looking for something.’
Maria shuddered. Everybody gazed unhappily at the vultures.
‘A poor choice, I suppose,’ Hamilton said. ‘The cooking-pots, head-hunters or the vultures. And speaking of cooking-pots, some fresh meat might help. Curassow—a kind of wild turkey—armadillo, wild boar, all very tasty. Navarro?’
Ramon said: ‘I’ll come too.’
‘You stay, Ramon. A little more thoughtfulness, please. Someone has to look after these poor souls.’
Tracy said: ‘To keep an eye on us, you mean.’
‘I don’t see what mischief you can get up to here.’
‘Your haversack.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Tracy said deliberately: ‘Heffner appeared to find something there just before you murdered him.’
Ramon said: ‘Before Mr Heffner met his unfortunate end is what Mr Tracy means.’
Hamilton eyed Tracy thoughtfully then turned away into the forest, Navarro following. Less than two hundred yards from the camp Hamilton put a restraining hand on Navarro’s arm and pointed ahead. Not forty yards away was a quiexada, that most savage of all the world’s wild boars. They are so devoid of fear that they have been known to invade towns in herds, driving the citizens into their houses.
‘Supper,’ Hamilton said.
Navarro nodded and raised his rifle. One single shot was all that Navarro would ever need. They began to make their way towards the dead animal then halted abruptly. A herd of perhaps three dozen quiexada had suddenly appeared from the forest. They halted, pawed the ground, then came on again. There was no mistaking their intention.
Only on the riversides do Amazonian trees have branches, for only there can they get sunlight. Hamilton and Navarro reached the lowermost branches of the nearest tree a short distance ahead of the boars, which proceeded to encircle the tree and then, as if in response to some unseen signal, began to use their vicious tusks to savage the roots of the tree. The roots of the Amazonian trees, like those of the giant sequoia of California, are extremely long—and extremely shallow.
‘I would say they have done this sort of thing before,’ Navarro said. ‘How long is this going to take, do you think?’
‘Not long at all.’
Hamilton sighted his pistol and shot a quiexada that seemed to be more industrious than its companions. The dead animal toppled into the river. Within seconds, the smooth surface of the river was disturbed by a myriad ripples and there came the high-pitched, spine-chilling buzzing whine as the needle teeth of the voracious piranha proceeded to strip the quiexada to the bone.
Navarro cleared his throat and said: ‘Perhaps you should have shot one not quite so close to the river.’
Hamilton said: ‘Quiexada to one side, piranha to the other. You don’t by any chance see a constrictor lurking in the branches above?’
Involuntarily, Navarro glanced upwards, then down at the boars which had redoubled their efforts. Both men started firing and within seconds a dozen quiexada lay dead.
Navarro said: ‘Next time I go boar-hunting—if there is a next time—I shall bring a sub-machine-gun with me. My magazine is empty.’
‘Mine too.’
The sight of their dead companions seemed only to increase the blood lust of the boars. They tore at the roots with savage frenzy—and, already, several of the roots had been severed.
Navarro said: ‘Senor Hamilton, either I’m shaking or this tree is becoming rather—what is the word for it?’
‘Wobbly?’
‘Wobbly.’
‘I don’t think.
I know.’
A rifle shot rang out and a boar dropped dead. Hamilton and Navarro swung round to look back the way they had come. Ramon, who seemed to be carrying a pack of some sort on his back, was less than forty yards away and was prudently standing by a low-branched tree. He fired steadily and with deadly accuracy. Suddenly an empty click was heard. Hamilton and Navarro looked at each other thoughtfully, but Ramon remained unperturbed. He reached into his pocket, extracted another magazine clip, fitted it and resumed firing. Three more shots and it finally dawned on the quiexada that they were on to a hiding to nothing. Those that remained turned and ran off into the forest.
The three men walked back towards the camp, dragging a quiexada behind them. Ramon said: ‘I heard the shooting so I came. Of course, I brought plenty of spare ammunition with me.’ Deadpan, he patted a bulging pocket, then shrugged apologetically. ‘All my fault. I should never have let you go alone. One has to be a man of the forest—’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Hamilton said. ‘Thoughtful of you to bring my rucksack along with you.’
Ramon said pontifically: ‘One should not expose the weak-minded to temptation.’
‘Do be quiet,’ Navarro said. He turned to Hamilton. ‘God only knows he was insufferable enough before. But now, after this—’
The cooking fire burned in the near darkness and boar steaks sizzled in a glowing bed of coals.
Smith said: ‘I appreciate the necessity for all the shots. But if the Horena are around—well, that must have attracted the attention of everyone within miles.’
‘No worry,’ Hamilton said. ‘No Horena will ever attack at night. If he dies at night his soul will wander for ever in the hereafter. His gods must see him die.’ He prodded a steak with his sheath knife. ‘I would say those are just about ready.’ Ready or not, the steaks were dispatched with every sign of gusto and when they were finished Hamilton said: ‘Better if it had hung a week, but tasty, tasty. Bed. We leave at dawn. I’ll keep the first watch.’
They prepared for sleep, some lying on waterproof sheets, others in lightweight hammocks slung between trees at the edge of the clearing. Hamilton flung some fuel on the fire and kept on flinging it until it flared up so brightly that the flames were almost ten feet high. Machete in hand, Hamilton departed to obtain some more fuel and returned with an armful of branches most of which he cast on the already blazing fire.
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