I had a terrible time getting any sleep the remainder of the night, but by morning I had convinced myself that there was nothing to worry about.  The jungle girl had left me before, I reminded myself, and she had always returned.  She was probably hunting another meal for us.  When the sun came up, I busied myself with my morning rituals and then sat down to wait.

When she had not returned by what I judged to be eleven in the morning, I decided that I could make myself useful.  Kanana had fed me fruits back at her fortress.  Therefore, there must be fruit available for the picking in the jungle. I would search the immediate area and see what I could add to our shared meals.  I searched for about two hours, but found no fruit, no mushrooms, no vegetables.  The only thing I found to eat was a scorpion and I was no more inclined to put it in my mouth than I had been the day before, when Kanana had found its twin.

After mashing the urine-colored creature beneath my boot, I looked around and realized that I had no idea where I was.  I had wandered out of sight of the fire pit and the broken hammock, and I could no longer see through the trees to the savannah beyond.  We had set up just inside the boundary of the trees, so it should have been an easy proposition to find the boundary between forest and grassland, if not my campsite.  This was assuming of course that I knew which direction either of them lay.

I thought that the grassland was south of the forest.  Had Christopher Columbus been correct and the world round, it would have been easy enough to navigate by using the sun, but as the sun is always directly overhead, it was no help at all.  I had heard that moss grew on the north sides of trees, but for the life of me, I could find no moss.  Therefore I made my best guess and started through the trees.  After walking for an hour, I decided that I was walking in a circle.  This was the fate of one moving through a forest or swamp without a fixed point of destination.  Everyone has a dominant foot and they, usually without realizing it, tend toward that direction.  I had learned a remedy for such a situation when I was in the jungles of Cuba.

I cut a tall but narrow sapling and stripped it of leaves and branches.  Then laying it down, I followed it as though I was following a compass needle.  Then I reached the end, I picked it up and laid it down again.  I was creating a path for myself and this kept me from turning one way or the other.  It did slow me down quite a bit though, and it was late afternoon when I finally saw the savannah through the trees.

I was at the edge of the woods, not knowing whether my original camp was to the left or right of me, not knowing how far I had travelled, and most importantly, not knowing where Kanana was and why she hadn’t returned.  Thinking about it, I decided that it wasn’t important that I wasn’t in the exact spot in which I had started.  I couldn’t have travelled very far, and Kanana’s skills in navigating the jungle were surely such that she would be able to find me were I ten times as far as I could walk in a day.

These thoughts soothed me for all of thirty seconds, for just as I stepped from the edge of the forest, I was surrounded by a dozen fierce looking natives, each with a stone-tipped spear pointed in my direction.  They looked very much like the Tokayana people of the coast, copper-skinned with jet-black hair, tall, graceful, and muscular. Unlike the citizens of Abbeyport, these warriors wore clothing of animal skins—usually nothing more than a loincloth, but sometimes a vest or pants.

I was weighing the possibility of pulling out my pistol and shooting one or two of them before they stabbed me, when the largest among them reached out and snatched the weapon from my holster.  This fellow, who was evidently in charge, tall and I had to admit, handsome, said something to me and pointed across the grassland.  That he was ordering me to move was emphasized when he poked me with his spear.  I gave no argument, but started walking, surrounded by my captors.

I marched all day long through the waist high-grass, and while I was constantly on the lookout for any opportunity in which to escape, none came.  Every so often, the warriors allowed me a drink of water from an animal skin canteen, but they gave me nothing to eat until that night.  When we at last stopped beneath a little copse of trees, they handed me a piece of dried meat.  When I had finished it, I was bound hand and foot.

I didn’t sleep much that night.  I was uncomfortable.  I was worried.  And I was constantly watching and listening for any sign of Kanana.  None came.  In the morning, after short preparations, we started off again.  Though they untied my feet, this time they left my hands fastened behind me.  Though again I was given water, this second day took quite a toll on me.  I was weak, and it became increasingly difficult to pay attention to what I was doing.  I tripped several times.  By the time we came to a halt on the second day, my shoulders were so sore that I could barely lift what small bit of food I was given.  Thankfully when I had eaten, though they tied me again, this time they did so with my hands in front of me.

On the third day, we reached the village of the warriors in whose grasp I now found myself.  I didn’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly didn’t expect what I saw. Village was not nearly a lofty enough word to describe it, though perhaps city would be too extravagant. Five hundred round huts were gathered together inside a great wooden palisade.  In the very center was a small hillock and at its top, a hut, similar to all the others, though larger.  This town, as I shall now call it, had been built at the juxtaposition of the grassland and the forest.  Now though, neither looked very close.  The ground in and all around the town had been beaten to bare earth by a thousand footfalls, and all that remained of several miles of what had once been forest were the burnt stumps of large trees with tilled farmland running between them.

The warriors led me to the center of the town, where I was surrounded by the citizens, men, women, and children all chattering away in a language that I didn’t understand.  Several men and women approached and examined me.  I assumed they were local dignitaries because their clothing was finer and more highly decorated than most.  They poked and prodded me and then apparently gave orders for my disposal.

We stayed in the tree house for three more days.  I spent most of that time up in the tree, but wasn’t completely the pampered pet I often felt myself to be.  When Kanana brought home food, I sometimes prepared it, and since I knew much more about the art of cooking than she did, I at least found my own cooking more palatable.  I spent more than a few hours teaching words to Kanana, and she was an attentive and energetic pupil.  She also took to kissing me often.  I don’t know how often she thought of her mating idea, but for me, with her running around unclothed; it was hard to think of anything else.  She was no longer covered with a thick layer of mud, but had dusted herself with reddish tan dirt.  The effect was to make her look even more naked than she was, as impossible as that sounds.  And I began to realize just how strong Kanana was.  She would run and jump and lift things that would have been a challenge for a strong man, let alone a woman.  She was slender, but beneath her skin were muscles like steel coils. Still, every part of her seemed to fit so well together that I couldn’t imagine her being anything but what she was.  Every once in a while, she would ask me a question.

“Where Henry Goode’s home?”

“It was in Boston… America.  I suppose I don’t really have a home now.”

“There Giwa… el-eph-ants in Boston?”

“No, no elephants in Boston.  Neither are there any lions or crocodiles.  No hippopotamuses either.”

“Hippo-po-po?”

I cupped my hands by my ears and flipped them around to imitate the ears of a hippo.

“Dornar,” she said, nodding.  “Dornar danger.”

On the fourth day after the crocodile attack, Kanana examined my leg and pronounced me on the way to recovery.  I had been watching the teeth wounds fairly closely myself and was both pleased and surprised that there seemed to be no sign of infection.  I knew from firsthand experience that infection could kill a man deader than a bullet or a knife.

We climbed down the tree and walked through the forest, back to the edge of the grassland.  Skirting along the edge of the trees, we traveled in what I calculated to be a roughly southeast direction.  The elephants that I had seen here previously were gone, but there were plenty of other animals.

Near noon, we found a large log lying across our path.  Turning it over, Kanana stabbed around in the rotting wood with her knife, and then reached down to pull out a large scorpion.  She held it out toward me.

“Henry eat.”

“Eat?  Eat that? I cannot imagine any circumstance in which I would put that in my mouth.  It would sting me.”

“Kanana cut harbi.”  She held it closer to my face.  It’s tiny pincers snapped.  “See? No sting.”

“I shall not eat that,” I said.

She shrugged and popped it into her mouth.  She chomped down on the arachnid and a bit of its insides squirted out from between her lips.  She scooped them back into her mouth with a finger, chewed several times, and then swallowed.

“Does it taste good?” I asked.

“No,” she replied simply, and turning, continued onward.

An hour later, we stopped to rest beneath a small tree that sat out on the grass away from the rest of the forest.  The sun was warm, but the little tree provided enough shade.  I was just starting to feel drowsy, when Kanana got up and stepped over to a small green plant growing amid the brown grass. Kneeling down, she dug into the ground with her knife.  I stepped over to watch her.  About twelve inches below the surface, she uncovered two large tubers.  Cutting them away from their roots, she pulled the vegetables out and peeled them.

“Henry eat,” she said, handing me one.

I took a bite to find something very much like a mild radish, but with a much greater water content.

“This is good,” I said, feeling my thirst quenched more than my hunger abated. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Kanana say eat harbi-togo.  Henry not eat.”

“We don’t eat bugs where I come from.”

“Not in Boston,” said the jungle girl.  “In Boston we eat what Henry say.  In Kanana’s land we eat what Kanana say.”

A loud bellow a short distance away brought all conversation to a halt.  We looked up to see a great shaggy form lumbering toward us.  It looked like a frightening cross between a bear and a horse, and though it wasn’t quite as big as Giwa, it was fully as large as the bull elephants of Africa. Though I had never seen one alive, I knew from my visits to the Boston Society of Natural History what it was. It was a megatherium or giant sloth. I also knew that it was a plant eater.

As I watched, it stood up on its hind legs, stretching to a height of twenty feet, and bellowed again.  Kanana grabbed me by the sleeve and jerked me almost off my feet.

“Run,” she hissed.

“It’s a sloth.”

The gigantic monster shifted from its slow walk to a sort of jog.  Still holding onto my sleeve, she turned and ran toward the trees, pulling me along with her.  I stumbled a few steps, but regained my footing and ran along with her. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that we were easily outdistancing the megatherium, and I wasn’t running as fast as I was able, so I knew that Kanana wasn’t.

“It’s big and all, but it’s a herbivore, isn’t it?”

“Utuga bad all the time.  Utuga kill lion.  Utuga kill Giwa.  Utuga eat plants, trees.  Sometimes eat meat.”  She slowed to a brisk walk as we reached the tree line.  “Henry eat what Kanana say.  Henry run when Kanana say.”

I was literally stunned to immobility.  I thought back to my life in Boston and my whirlwind courtship. Everything is relative—is it not? Even among the primitive people that I had met in Africa, Asia, and here in Elizagaea, one did not jump into the act of procreation without some small token ceremony or ritual.  The jungle girl looked over her shoulder at me, watching for a moment, and the frowned.

“Henry not know mate?”

“Oh, I know what to do,” I said, just as I remembered that movement was still a part of my skill set.

I stood up, stepped around her, and taking her by the shoulders, lifted her up to stand in front of me.

“We’re not animals.  We’re people. We don’t do it like that.”

“Kanana is lion.”

“No.  Kanana is a girl.”

“Henry is girl,” she said.  “Kanana is lion.”

“Henry is a man,” I corrected, “and Kanana is a girl… no, a woman.  Men and women don’t behave that way.  They have to take their time and get to know each other. Then they make a commitment to one another—they promise to help one another.  They love one another.”

“Henry show,” she said.

She stood there, so beautiful and for all practical purposes, naked.  Her eyes, so full of innocence and curiosity, looked up into mine.  And as I had told Kanana, Henry is a man.  He is certainly no saint.  I pulled her to me and crushed her mouth to mine.  I feasted on her lips as my hands ran from her face to her shoulders, and I could feel her arms snaking around my body and pulling me closer to her lithe, muscular form.  Regaining control of myself, I pulled back and looked at her.  She stared up at me, her lips parted, panting.

“Henry show again.”

I kissed her again, this time with more control, before stepping away.  I turned away so that I wouldn’t be further temped.

“Is there a place nearby to wash?” I asked.

“Yes.  Come.”

We climbed down and trekked through the woods about half a mile before coming to a small stream.  It was barely a trickle, certainly not enough to bath in, but I could hear running water a little further on.

“Is there a river?” I asked, pointing.

“River not good,” said Kanana, and then she stretched her arms out and made a scissors motion with them.

“Crocodiles?”

“Croc-o-diles.  Crocodiles eat Henry.”

“What about you?  Won’t they eat you too?”

“No.  Kanana is lion.” To add emphasis to her statement, she once again gave a throaty and very realistic lion’s roar.

Kanana started gathering large stones and placing them in the path of the stream, and as soon as I realized what she was doing, I followed suit. Soon we had dammed up the little trickle and made a small pool.  It wasn’t more than eight inches deep at most, but it allowed us to sit and bathe. The jungle girl was finished first, having been already really naked.  I had never been overly shy, so I quickly disrobed and washed myself.  By the time I was clean and dried and had begun to dress, I noticed that my companion was gone.

Deciding that the best course of action would be to return to the tree house and wait for Kanana, I started back the way we had come.  The jungle trees were alive with life, from buzzing insects to howling monkeys and squawking birds.  Either the sights and sounds distracted me, or I just lost my way, but just when I thought I should be arriving at the arboreal dwelling, I stepped out onto the shore of a large river.  It was as large as the river I had navigated on my steamer trunk.  It could have been the same river for all I knew.

I didn’t want anything to do with the river, knowing the dangers, especially since I had already washed and drunk from the little stream.  As I turned to leave however, a huge form shot out of the water and a great reptilian mouth snapped down.  The crocodile’s jaws closed, missing me, and for a split second, I congratulated myself on my luck.  Then the beast jerked its head to the left and clamped down on my leg just below my knee.  It had me, and it immediately dragged me into the water.  I tried to grab at something on shore, but I could no more stop him from taking me than a trout, once hooked on a lure at the end of a rod and reel, could have prevented me from pulling him into a net.

Suddenly, a form fell from the sky.  Kanana had flown from the branches of a nearby tree, dropping right onto the crocodiles back.  Before the beast, which had to weigh well over a ton, could move, she jammed her knife through its thickly armored skull and into its brain.  The crocodile stopped moving and just floated.  The jungle girl grasped its snout and pried the jaws apart, freeing me.

“River not good!” she growled at me.

We left the shoreline and she guided me back to the little pool.  My heart was still pumping and I felt as though I could have run back to Abbeyport.  Such are the effects of discovering one is still alive after having been sure of the reverse.  When I sat down though, not only did I feel light-headed, I noticed my trouser leg had a large bloodstain.  Kanana lifted it to examine my calf.  There were a dozen round tooth marks, all bleeding.

“Henry Goode not listen,” she said angrily.  “Henry stay.”

She left again, but returned in a few minutes with more mysterious jungle plants.  I watched her carefully this time as she doctored me.  I thought I might be able to recognize those plants if I saw them again.  They had peculiar spade-shaped leaves.  She chewed them up to make a paste and stuck it on my wounds, and then made a bandage with the already soiled portion of my trouser leg.

The swinging gate of the gigantic elephant, as it moved across the great plain, mimicked the motion of a small boat on the ocean.  It was almost hypnotizing.  I watched the many animals that we passed by.  Having been to Africa, I was no stranger to great herds of herbivores moving as one across the grassy landscape, but here I was able to view them from much closer than I had ever been before.  The huge deer, standing seven feet tall at the shoulder, but with antlers spanning twelve feet; gnus, almost identical to their African cousins except for their black fur; bison with horns that would have made any Texas longhorn envious; and a species of zebra that had stripes only around its face and front shoulders—all of these creatures allowed the pachyderm to approach much closer than they would have a walking human.  I saw more of the saber tooth cats, rhinoceros with no horn at all, brightly colored ostriches, and armadillos the size of a kitchen table.  It was an amazing expedition, but one can only stay amazed for so long. Eventually, between the general fatigue that I experienced, and the motion of my mount, I was lulled into a drowse.

“Henry Goode,” said Kanana.

I started awake.

“It is time to say goodbye to Giwa.”

Kanana slipped a leg over the great beast’s shoulder and slipped to the ground. Fortunately I didn’t have to perform the same acrobatics.  The elephant lowered itself just as it had done when we climbed aboard, and though it was still quite a drop, I managed it, sliding down its side.  Giving us a parting sniff with its trunk, Giwa turned and walked off across the savannah.

“Are we back home?” I asked, looking around.

“No no, Henry Goode.  We are… many far away.”

“Why did you send your elephant away then?”

“Giwa not… happy?”  Kanana looked for my confirmation of the word.  I nodded.

“Giwa not happy here.”

“This looks very much like the rest of the grassland to me,” I conceded. “More jungle off in that direction.”

“Smell,” she ordered.

I took a deep breath but couldn’t smell anything notable.

“What am I smelling?”

“Smell zuhu.”

“Doesn’t zuhu mean lion?”

A tremendous roar suddenly reverberated through the air, into my skin, and right down my spine.  Before I had realized what was happening, a pair of monstrous lions jumped out of the high grass, right at Kanana.  I was frozen in place, but my companion wasn’t.  With an equally ferocious roar of her own, she leapt forward, grasping one of the beasts around the middle, and knocking it from the air.  I suddenly remembered that I had a pistol and pulled it out, but by that time the girl and the two lions were one gigantic, growling pile. As I looked for a target amid the furry mess, the jungle girl let loose with a peel of laughter.  Jumping to her feet, she wrapped an arm around each of the great black-maned heads.

“Henry Goode,” she called.  “These are Kanusa and Katusa.  They are Kanana’s… brothers.”

I sucked in a mouthful of air, only now realizing that I had been holding my breath.  Then I realized that all around me were lions—maybe twenty of them, ranging in size from the two enormous males that now nosed Kanana’s stomach to females only slightly smaller, to a number of yearlings, any one of whom would have been a match for me.  None of them made a threatening move toward me, so I stuffed my pistol back in its holster and checked my pants to make sure I hadn’t soiled myself.

“Henry Goode,” I heard.

“Just Henry,” I heard myself reply, even though I wasn’t aware of where I was or to whom I was speaking.

Food was pushed into my mouth, and I managed, barely, to chew and swallow. Afterwards water was given to me and I drank.  I don’t know how long this continued, but eventually I found the strength and will to sit up.  I was still in the stone room where Kanana had tied me down.  She was there, slicing pieces of cooked meat and putting them on a wooden platter.  I jumped to my feet and immediately fell to the floor.  She rushed over.

“What have you done to me?” I shouted, shrugging her away.

I pulled up my shirt to look at the arrow wound, but all that remained was a slight scar.

“Good, Henry Goode.”

“Just Henry,” I replied, anger still tinting my words.

“Good, Henry,” she said, retrieving the plate and bringing it to me.  “Eat.”

“You seem to speak much better now.”

“Kanana… remember.”

I took the food offered, but I was far from mollified.

“What did you do to me?  I had maggots crawling on me.  And you poisoned me.”

“Kanana give… um, medicine.  Kanana give… mags?”

“Maggots.”

“Kanana give maggots.  Maggots eat… um, dead Henry.  Not eat live Henry.”

I thought she was explaining that the maggots ate only the putrefying flesh and not the good, living flesh.  I was no doctor, but I wasn’t ready to buy into that proposition.  On the other hand, there was no denying that I seemed fine now.  Still, I couldn’t help the nagging fear that I would burst open, sprouting a horde of vile insects.

“Henry tell Kanana…” she pointed at the plate.

“Food, plate, meat, fruit.”  I supplied her with words which she eagerly repeated as I ate.

When I had finished, she motioned me to follow.  A door in the room led out onto a small balcony.  Beside it, flowing from somewhere in the mountain’s core, water shot forth from the rock face, creating a waterfall and cascading down to a beautiful blue pool some ten feet below.  Kanana jumped up onto the low stone wall that formed the balcony’s edge and then dived into the water below.  She surface and then waved at me to follow her.

“Is it deep enough?” I called, ignoring the fact that she had just dived in.

She gave me another wave.

“Water.  Henry…” She pinched her nose.

“I stink?  Yes, I do.”

I climbed up on the wall and with none of the gracefulness the jungle girl had shown, jumped into the water.  It was much cooler than the muggy air, but not too cold.  When I surfaced, I looked down.  The water was clear enough for me to see my feet and the pool’s bottom below them, but a cloud of dirt and filth began darkening the water around me.  I was embarrassed, but then I looked toward Kanana and found she was swimming in her own cloud as the mud that had coated her body as long as I had known her was washed away.

I forgot about myself as I watched the transformation of this wild creature into a lovely young woman with perfect skin and dark brown hair.  She had a cute button nose, and her widely spaced green eyes narrowed naturally into a squint when she smiled, as she did when she saw me watching her.  Swimming over, she tugged at the sleeve of my shirt.

“Off,” she said, and then gracefully swam away across the pool.

I peeled off my outer clothes only to find my underclothes even more disgusting. Once the last of my things were removed, I submerged myself and began scrubbing as best I could with both hands.

“Henry.”

Kanana was back with a handful of fronds from some forest succulent plant. Squeezing them in her palm, she created a sudsy lather.

“Soap.”

“Soap,” she repeated as she pushed them toward me.

I started awake and for the life of me could not remember where I was or how I got there.  This wasn’t my home in Boston and I wasn’t propped against a tree near a river in the jungles of Elizagaea either.  I was lying on my back on something soft.  Feeling down, I found it was a pile of straw or hay.  Complete blackness surrounded me and looking up I could see neither stars nor moon.  I tried to sit up and immediately felt pain shooting through my side.  If that wasn’t an indication of where I was, it was at least a reminder of recent events.  The air felt cool, but I was drenched in sweat—most probably a result of fever.

Getting to my feet, I found that I was under a roof of some kind far above my head, but that I could see stars off to my left.  With great effort I walked in that direction, but had taken no more than five steps when someone grabbed me and jerked me back.

“No Henry Goode!” said a female voice.

“Kanana?”

“Kanana,” she confirmed.

“What is it?  What’s the matter?  Where are we?”

Though I don’t know whether she understood any of my questions, she guided my hand down to the ground and along a smooth stone floor beneath my feet. Just a few inches in front of me it ended.  I was standing on the edge of some great precipice and had been about to step off. Pulling me along by my shirt, she led me back to where I had started and guided me back down to the bed of straw.

My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness but I could only make out her outline.  Kanana could evidently see just fine, for she pushed something into my hand.  I could feel that it was some kind of fruit and when I took a bite I recognized it as a plum.  While I ate, she left me where I was, and though I wanted her to stay with me, by the time I finished eating the plum I had drifted back to sleep.

This time, if I did return to that vile dream, I had no memory of it when I awoke. I opened my eyes to see bright daylight streaming into the room where I lay.  It was a stone room, or that is to say, it was most of a stone room. There was a ceiling and a floor and three walls, all constructed of massive stone blocks fitted together with brilliant precision.  Each of the three walls had windows.  Two of them looked out over the unbroken jungle below, revealing that this room along with whatever other parts of the complex existed, were built on a granite mountainside poking above the lush green country.  The third window revealed an enormous rock jutting into the sky. On the fourth side of the room, not only was the entire wall missing, a good portion of the mountain had fallen away in a landslide, leaving only a narrow winding path down to the ground hundreds of feet below.  I felt far too shaky in my current state to make the descent and wondered that I had ever been able to make it up here.

My jungle girl was nowhere to be seen but it was obvious that she made this her home, at least sometimes.  The mat where I had slept was on one side of the room, covered in a mattress I now recognized as savannah grasses.  On the other side was a similar bed, along with several pieces of ancient luggage. Opening them up I found clothing that might have come from America or Europe but that was some ten or fifteen years out of style, not that I kept up with such things.  There were a few very nice pieces of gold jewelry and a small personal journal.

I couldn’t read the book.  It was in a foreign language that I was able to identify as Russian only by the peculiar additions to the alphabet.  From the inside cover I determined that this was the journal of one Aleksandra Christyakova-Romanov.  I scanned the pages and found the names Robert James Haldane and Aleksandra Haldane.  From this scant evidence I pieced together a picture of a Russian woman who married an Englishman.  Perhaps he had visited Russia on business or in some diplomatic capacity, had met the young woman and married her.  I knew of course that Romanov was the family name of the Russian monarchy, but surely there were others as well with that surname.

We continued on our way through the thick green jungle for another week.  It was quite beautiful, with flowers blossoming on vines and bushes all over.  I spotted many interesting animals too; animals that I had never heard of before. None of them inspired me to shoot them though.  There were numerous monkeys, mostly small, though I did spy one variety in the very tops of the threes that were almost three feet tall.  Tiny antelope, large rodents, and medium sized tapirs were also in evidence.  What I didn’t enjoy was the variety and the density of the insect life.  I was constantly brushing large creepy crawlies from my clothing, and the mosquitoes that buzzed in huge clouds near dawn and dusk bit me mercilessly.

Finally we came to the edge of a large river winding its way toward the north. The water was slow moving and appeared deep.  The first things that I noticed were the crocodiles lying in the sun on the far bank. I had heard of the prehistoric crocodiles, whose gigantic skeletons had been found in recent years by fossil hunters. None of these creatures approached the dimensions of those, but they seemed plenty big to me, with several well over twenty feet in length.  Then I saw that in addition to the crocs, the water was teeming with hippos.  I had been to Africa and had seen similar congregations of hippos and crocodiles in rivers there.  These hippos, while not smaller than those in Africa, seemed to be built on a lighter frame, with longer legs and slightly less bulbous heads.

“We will go this way,” said Saral, pointing to the north.  “There are rapids several miles away that we may cross. There will be no creatures to fear there.”

“Alright,” I said.  “Are there any people living around here?”

“No.  My people, the Tokayana once lived in these forests but we have all moved to the coast to trade with the Englishmen.  The Chikuyana live far to the north.”

“And how do your people and they get along?”

“A long time ago we were enemies.  There hasn’t been any fighting for many years.”

“That’s good.”

The trek north along the river was relatively easy because of numerous game trails and hippo wallows that pushed back the jungle growth, and before long we were at a spot where the river widened to series of rapids flowing between several piles of massive boulders.  Though in a few places the water looked both deep and swift, there seemed to be adequate footing to step from stone to stone and get across.  The difficult part would be for the bearers, carrying the trunks, one at each corner.  There were several places where two could not cross abreast.  Fortunately the trunks were waterproof.  I took out a coil of rope and cut lengths that could be fastened at each corner.  The trunks could then be floated in the water next to the people crossing on the rocks, held under control by the four men.

We were in the middle of the one hundred yard crossing before there was any hint of trouble.  Suddenly one of the bearers cried out in pain and I saw an arrow piercing his chest before he toppled into the churning rapids.  Then the air was thick with stone-tipped missiles.  Two more men fell into the water after being shot, and a couple dived in to escape that fate.  By this time I could see that our attackers were firing from the far side of the river.

“Go back!” I shouted and the men were attempting to do so, but between the deadly arrows and the panic, most were falling rather than making a successful retreat.  Saral was on a large flat rock just ahead of me, next to an upright boulder.  He seemed to be frozen in his spot from fear or indecision, so I jumped forward and grabbed hold of him, turning so that between the boulder and my body, he was shielded from attack.  Then I felt a horrible pain in my side and looked down to see a stone-tipped shaft protruding from my abdomen.

“Run!” I shouted at the boy, but he was still frozen.

We stood on the deck of the S.S. Louisa May and watched the coastline roll gently past.  Beyond the flawless stretch of white sand overhanging with coconut trees was a thick growth of jungle brush and more exotic trees stretching up for the sky—big leaf mahogany trees, Brazil nut trees, giant kapoks, and massive capironas.  Wisps of morning mist still hung in the air, undisturbed by any breeze.  Buzzing through these vapors like airplanes dodging through the clouds were six-inch dragonflies.  Except for the low chugging of the ship’s engine, there was no sound, until the air was suddenly rent by a deep throaty roar of some unknown creature inside that dark and haunting primeval forest.  Colonel Roosevelt clapped a hand on my shoulder.

“What do you think, my boy, of your first close-up view of a new world?”

I looked at him and said something, I no longer remember what, but I turned immediately back to the emerald panorama gliding swiftly by.  It had been a horrible series of events that had conspired to bring me to this distant spot, early this Monday morning April seventh, the year of our Lord 1913.

I had fully expected that by my thirty-third year, that halfway point in a man’s life, I would be settled down with a pretty wife and two or three above average children.  But providence did not see fit to make this easy for me.  Becoming a man in the height of battle on the slopes of Kettle Hill created a burning desire for adventure in my heart that the brief conflict with the Empire of Spain failed to quench.  I traveled to South America and saw much of that land, and then to Africa and even to Southeast Asia.  I then spent five years in Europe, working for my keep as I toured the ancient lands of Greece and Rome and their successors.  When I at last found my way back to the good old US of A, I was more than ready to settle down, to find that pretty wife, and to start that family. Luck was with me.  I found a new job and a beautiful girl.  For two years everything went my way.  Then it all fell apart.

“Henry… Henry.”  The hand on my shoulder shook me back to the present.

“I’m sorry sir.  What was that?”

“I was just saying that we should go aft and enjoy a cup of coffee.”

I turned and followed him down the length of the ship.  “I wanted to say Colonel, that I voted for you in November.”

“I had no doubt.”  He grinned.  “A good many people did, but the electorate has spoken.  That is not to say that I might not make a similar run sometime in the future.  I am still fit as a bull moose.”

“Indeed sir, you are the youngest former President that I have ever heard of.”

“The secret to youth is a vigorous life.  I have no need to tell you that.  Look at you. You are a strapping man of heroic proportions.  Why, I recall you as a rather scrawny boy when I think back to our days in Cuba. Private Henry Goode—no, he did not look at all promising.”

“I can’t believe that you remembered me at all,” I said, thinking back to three weeks before, when I booked passage on the Louisa May in San Francisco.

“I remember all the men of our volunteer regiment,” he replied sincerely, “and a good number of the Tenth’s Buffalo Soldiers as well.  There is a bond forged in such situations that is not easily to be set aside.”

A steward handed each of us a cup of coffee and we sat down in a couple of sturdy folding chairs.  My eyes again sought the rainforest moving smoothly past us.  Roosevelt leaned over, bringing my attention back to him.

“It is quite an interesting coincidence that we both find ourselves on the same vessel sailing into foreign waters.”  I started to protest, but he held up his hand.  “I take you at your word that you didn’t know I was aboard, despite the fact that Kermit and I have hardly been secretive in our planning. No, what I want to know is why, if you are not planning on joining our quest, are you are on your way to Elizagaea.”