Several miles later, the forest changed. The tall capirona trees grew less common and a shorter tree with a split trunk grew in the light that fell between the openings in the canopy. Quite by accident I discovered that the split trunks held little pools of water. I climbed up one of the trees when confronted by several warthogs. As I was climbing down, I saw the water. It wasn’t much more than a cup and it had mosquito larvae floating in it, but I took this as a good sign. Splashing the little vermin out as best I could, I stuck my face in the bowl of the tree and drank. After that, I went from tree to tree until my thirst was satisfied.
It was much darker beneath the canopy of the forest than out on the savannah, so the evening seemed to arrive quite suddenly. I would have liked to build a fire, both for the warmth and to protect me from animals, but I had neither flint nor steel, and I didn’t think I had time to create a flame any other way. Instead, I climbed up into a tree and fell asleep sitting on a branch with my back to the trunk.
I woke in the middle of the night with the feeling that someone was in the tree with me. My first thought was that it was Kanana, caught up to me at last. After waiting a minute or two for her to announce herself, I called her name. There was no answer. It was so completely dark that I wasn’t able to ascertain if there was in fact anything or anyone there, and listening gave me no answer. I didn’t actually decide that there was no one there. My body decided for me. I just fell back asleep.
I slept late the next morning. Thinking about the previous night, I worried about what might have happened to Kanana. After seeing her in action, it seemed inconceivable that she could have been captured or killed by the Tumukua. She was a force of nature. Could she even be killed? Was she truly what they believed her to be? Was she the keeper of the forest and the earth, and the bringer of death and evil and darkness? Or was she just Katarina Haldane, a European girl who had grown up alone in the primordial wilderness?
These musings were ended not by any conclusion, but by the sounds of my stomach growling. Climbing down from the tree, I continued on my way, generally following the downward slope of the land. Within an hour, I had come across another small ravine, about the same size as the one I had come across the previous day. This one though, had a small stream of running water at the bottom. While not big enough to harbor any crocodiles, it was large enough for small fish to navigate, and I spotted a few swimming along.
All along the little stream were tall brown stalks of some kind of grass. They didn’t have tufts at the top, like the cattails back home, but otherwise, they were similar enough. I gathered together an armful of them and wove them into a fish trap. Then I dammed the stream with stones, leaving only a small opening, in which I placed the trap. Splashing through the little artificial reservoir, I chased the fish into it. One actually jumped over my little dam and a few were crafty enough to swim around me, and head upstream, but I caught two. I used a sharp rock to butcher them, and then ate them raw.
Having found a secure source of food and water, I decided to make camp. I gathered together quite a collection of firewood and tinder, and then spent several hours attempting to start a fire. Though I suspected the sharp rock that I had found was flint, I had no steel to strike it against. Instead, I tried rubbing together two pieces of wood. I had a larger piece of dead wood and a smaller twig. Though I managed to produce some smoke, there appeared no spark. At last, exhausted, I hauled myself up into a tree for another long night. This time I wasn’t awakened until morning.
With the return of daylight, I was determined to do what I had been unable to do the day before. I sat down with my pieces of wood and began rubbing them together. After about two hours with little more than a spark, I slammed them both against a tree and marched down to the little stream to get a drink. When my thirst was slaked, I felt a little embarrassed about my temper tantrum. Fortunately there was nobody there to have seen it. I sat down and got back to work. Almost immediately, I produced smoke. Looking carefully, I saw that I had cracked the larger piece of wood. This apparently enabled air to get to the point of ignition. Within another twenty minutes, I had a raging fire going.
This time when I went fishing, I not only returned with three fine looking specimens, but I gutted them and roasted them over my fire.
I was halfway done eating the first fish and feeling eminently satisfied with myself, when I heard a grunt nearby. Turning, I saw a huge ground sloth walking quickly toward me. I ran the twenty feet to my sleeping tree and quickly climbed up to my branch. There I sat and watched as the great furry brute ate the rest of my meal. I thought of throwing sticks at him, but I wasn’t too sure that he wouldn’t be able to knock down the tree and get to me.
I stayed near the small stream for three more days, eating fish and regaining my strength. I wasn’t equipped to hunt much more than fish, but did manage to catch a single squirrel in a snare. I was not idle the rest of the time, however. I made a wood handle, to which I affix my sharp flint using sinew from the rodent. I found a sapling and made a spear, and though I had no spearhead, I sharpened the point and hardened it in the fire. While I could have eaten every fish I caught, on the third day I purposefully saved two and smoked the flesh over the fire so that I would have some provisions to take with me.
I started off with my meager supplies the following morning, filling my stomach with the cool water of the little stream before leaving my temporary home. The one item that I didn’t have, that I wished for more than anything else was a canteen. But water seemed to be common enough.
I wasn’t quite sure which way I was going. My intention was to go west. I was sure that had Kanana followed me from Mu, she would have been able to track me the rest of the way to where I had camped. Since she hadn’t, I could only assume that she had been captured or killed. As unhappy as I was at the prospect of returning to the lost city, I simply couldn’t leave her to any fate that might befall her there. With no compass, I had to take my best guess as to the direction, so I headed back toward the grassy plain where I had left Giwa. I determined to travel along the line of demarcation between the forest and the plain. That way I would have access to water and food, and I hoped to keep my sense of direction.
The plain was even more filled with animals than I had previously witnessed. I saw huge numbers of the giant horned bison, half-striped zebra, and wildebeest. Predators were in evidence too. I saw both the saber tooth leopards and the huge lions, and also wild dogs. Few animals seemed inclined to get too close to me, which was fine as far as I was concerned. At night, I climbed any available tree.
The second day of traveling, I came upon a large river. Given my previous experiences, I was afraid of coming too close. Though I didn’t see any hippos in the water here, this was the perfect hunting ground for crocodiles. I followed the river downstream, staying some distance from the bank, and as I suspected, it wasn’t long before I found a smaller river contributing its waters into the larger concourse.
This smaller stream was quite a bit larger than the one I had dammed to catch fish, but I followed it upstream in hopes of finding a similar location. I had gone perhaps a mile when I came upon, not a pool of fish, but a crocodile sunning on the bank. The two factors that inspired my interest in this particular reptile were the fact that it was relatively small, only about six feet long, and that it was turned away so that I was right behind it.
I crept up carefully on it. I had no idea of the range of vision that crocodiles possess, but it certainly didn’t seem to notice me. At the last moment, I leapt upon it, driving my spear down through the top of its head. Even though the point was sharpened and fire-hardened, it probably wouldn’t have pierced its armored skin or skull, had it not been driven with my entire weight behind it.
Using my stone knife, I gutted and cleaned the beast the best I could. I then carried it over my shoulder, a task made more difficult, not only by it weight, but by the quite unnatural wriggling that its body continued, even devoid of lungs and heart. Up a hill, I found a good spot
to make a camp. I made a fire, and before long was roasting crocodile steaks over it.
I ate as much as I could and I cooked more still, so that I would have something to eat the following morning. I was so conscious of food poisoning, that I didn’t keep any more of the meat that that. After spending yet another night in a tree, I started out, eating my crocodile as I went.
I walked all that next day with little incident, though twice I was forced to climb a tree, once upon encountering one of the monstrous ground sloths, and once when an overly inquisitive lion followed me. In neither of these incidents did I sustain any injury. In fact, during mid day, I discovered another stream, the cool water being a treasure in and of itself. This stream had a small pool next to it, created quite naturally by the retreating water, and in this pool were two very large fish. It was easy enough to catch them. As I was not too terribly hungry at that point, I cooked one fish and had another veritable feast for lunch. Not wanting the other fish to die for no reason, I let him loose in the river and I was as happy to see him swim away as he was to see the last of me.
The following day, I decided to continue along the stream that was a tributary of the great river. At the point at which I had killed the crocodile, it was perhaps twenty feet wide and relatively deep. At other points, it spread out quit wide, only a few inches deep over most of the span but with a few deeply cut channels.
It was late morning, when I stumbled, almost literally upon the body of a man. He was a native of Elizagaea, bronze-skinned and dark-haired, and his clothing was similar to the coastal villagers. Predators had savaged his body, though perhaps not so much as I would have expected. I stepped around him and started to continue on, when I saw a discarded item that made my heart leap. It was a canteen, the tool that I had wished for so much over the preceding days. I jumped toward it and picked it up, turning it over in my hand. Written in a large flowing script on the side now revealed were the initials TR.
Chapter Fourteen: The Lost Expedition
I turned back to the body that I had so casually disregarded. This caused me to question myself. In the past, if I had come across a dead man, I would have at least seen that he had a proper burial, but having spent at least a month in the wilds of Elizagaea, such civilized considerations were no longer a part of me. I would have still helped an injured man, but I had nothing that would be of help to a dead man. I turned back now because of the canteen. There was no doubt that it was from the Roosevelt expedition. It might even have belonged to Colonel Roosevelt himself. It seemed to me that there were two possible answers to why it should appear here. Either this man was a part of the expedition, or he had gotten the item from them. In either case, this didn’t bode well for TR or his men.
I carefully examined the man from head to foot. As I had noted before, he was a typical native of Elizagaea, probably a member of the Tokayana tribe. He had no shirt, but was still wearing a pair of denim shorts, no doubt imported from America. One sandal remained on his left foot, but I couldn’t see its companion in the area. I noticed a leather strap around his neck. So I rolled the body over, revealing between his back and the ground, a small satchel. I opened it and found a single piece of paper. Carefully unfolding it, I found a hand-drawn map. I had seen enough of Theodore Roosevelt’s maps and drawings in his books to recognize his hand. This was it.
The map showed a rough approximation of this part of the continent, including rivers that could be construed to be those that I had been so recently following. If this were truly the case, and not just my wishful thinking, then continuing to follow the particular tributary that I had been using for my navigation would lead to a vast swamp some distance ahead. Normally this would be something that I would avoid at all cost, but I wouldn’t be doing so this time. According to the map, Colonel Roosevelt and his men were lost in this quagmire.
I looked down at the body of the fallen man and felt more than I had when I first came upon him, but I still didn’t bother to bury him. The energy that I would have expended would be put to better use helping the living, specifically the lost expedition or myself.
I started again in the general direction that I had been going, which according to the map was southeast, veering a bit to the left to bring me to the river. Keeping a careful watch for danger, I drank my fill, washed out the canteen and filled it.
There by the river was a large section of fallen tree trunk. Pushing it with my foot, moved it about six inches and revealed three large scorpions. I stepped on them, killing them, and then pulled of the stingers, and one after the other, ate them. They tasted no better than I thought they would. Possibly worse. I was no longer worried about the taste though. All that mattered was the protein that they would provide me.
I continued scavenging as I traveled north, eating more scorpions, one big fat grub, several lizards, and a single egg. I also fished when I had the opportunity. Between the food and water and the walking, I began to feel better than I had in a while. The injuries to my torso and leg were now just memories. I was a healthy man and had always stayed in good condition, but if I were to admit it, I had grown a little soft during my two years in Boston. Now that layer of fat and laziness had been sloughed off. I was once again the man I had been fighting as a mercenary in North Africa or exploring Central Asia.
In late afternoon, of the second day after finding the body and the map, I came to the shore of the river, which had veered east and widened. On the far side was the vast swamp, filled with tall grasses. Even though I had been expecting it, I was struck by how forbidding it was.
It wasn’t a great deal of trouble to get on the other side of the river. In fact, I was able to do so without getting my feet wet, by skipping from stone to stone. The ground on the other side was not that different than that before crossing, only wetter. The further I traveled beyond however, the more swamp-like the conditions became. The tall grass went from a few clumps here and there to a veritable forest. The ground went from simply moist turf to a spongy material that sucked one down to his knees with each step.
As the afternoon began to grown late, I began looking for a place to camp for the night. There were no trees, and the only variations of the landscape were areas that were slightly less damp or slightly grassier. I tried to find a spot that fit the superlative in both these categories. It seemed to me that thicker grass and dryer land were the only chances I had of discouraging crocodiles. Finding such a spot, I curled up in the grass and slept.
I was slightly surprised to find that I was still alive the next morning. Just outside of my little hideaway, I spotted two fish in the shallow water. These were big fellows, each nearly two feet long. I jumped into the water, dropping down upon one of the fish, grabbing it, and wrestling it into the dryer land. I clubbed it twice to kill it and then butchered it the best I could with my meager toolkit. I ate about half the fish right away, and then carried the remainder with me as I continued my journey.
While traveling through the swamp, it was definitely difficult to keep one’s bearings. There were a few distant hills that I judged to be due east. The problem was that I was only able to catch a glimpse once or twice a day. In fact, it was quite difficult to see anything beyond the waves of tall grass. However, that afternoon, I was to spot a pillar of smoke rising in the distance. I veered slightly to the left and made my way toward it, a process that was difficult, since like the hills, I was only occasionally able to spot it.
I found another fish, similar in every way to the one I had eaten that morning, and captured it the same way. So, raw fish was my menu that second night in the swamp. With the relatively recent abundance in my foodstuffs, I felt as if I was finally returning to a healthy condition that I hadn’t enjoyed since my arrival on the continent.
After spending another night in what might be described as merely a tuft of weeds, I started off once again. Though I didn’t catch another glimpse of smoke that morning, after several hours I could smell it, and an hour later, I could hear the sounds of a human camp—the
clanging of metal, perhaps pots, human conversation, and barking.
“Hello!” I called out.
At first the sounds died out, with the sole exception of the barking dog. Then I heard a man’s voice shouting out “Who goes there?”
“Friend!” I called, in the typical answer given at military pickets.
“Identify yourself, friend!”
“Henry Goode of the United States of America!”
“We’re over here, Goode! Keep following the sounds of our voices.”
Other voices, some speaking English and some speaking native languages, joined the man calling out. It was clear that they wanted no chance of me missing them. I had gone perhaps fifty yards when I stepped out into a clearing. There on a relatively dry piece of land was a campsite with four ragged tents surrounding a campfire. In front of it stood seven native Elizageans and two white men.
One of the white men stepped forward to greet me. It took me a moment to recognize him. He had grown gaunt and his skin was red and blistered. He had a week’s growth of beard and he and his clothes were filthy. It was Kermit Roosevelt.
“My God, man,” he said. “What has happened to you?”
His question struck me for a moment, because it was just what I had been about to ask him. Then I looked down at myself. I must have looked a sight—completely naked save for the canteen strapped over my shoulder, wild hair, and well on the way to a full beard.
“Is your father with you?” I asked, avoiding any more small talk.
“He’s in the tent. Let me get you some clothes before you go in and see him. You can borrow a razor if you want.”
“Maybe a brush and comb,” I replied. “What happened to the rest of your men?”
“We were attacked by the Chikuyana and driven into this swamp. Once in here, we got lost, and another group has followed us: the Amboyana. They’re more primitive than the other tribes. They’ve followed us continually, shooting at us with poison darts. They killed six men and all the dogs save one. The rest of the men abandoned us, one after the other. I don’t know if any of them made it out or if they joined the Amboyana. We sent out a runner three days ago to try and get help.”
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