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 Means to an End --- Chapter 19
by Nathaniel Perkins
The trees of this jungle are thin and smooth, knotted with knuckles every few feet. None of their trunks are coiled, none of them look like the tough celery plants from our previous outing. The branches sprout paper thin leaves that fan out on all sides shading the ground below. Ropey vines twist through the underbrush like a pumpkin patch. Small yellow gourds sprout at intervals along the twisty vines. Caleb hacks one off and examines it. The strange fruit weeps a sticky pale fluid where Caleb’s machete scored it.
"The cooks might be able to do something with these." Caleb says tossing the bounty to Smith who catches it deftly. Smith sniffs at the thing and rubs the sap between two fingers before passing the gourd to me. It smells faintly of almonds, bitter and at odds with the sea air. The cut from Caleb’s machete took the fruit well below where it attached to the vine. The sap leaks from the meat of it, but the base also contains of well of it. I pour it out onto the ground.
"Cut them higher." I instruct the team. "Do not cut into the top of the gourd when you take them off the vines." Smith nods and soon we are gathering gourds as we push further into the landscape. Again we are forced to make our own trail, this time, however, the effort is minimal. The machete is a wonderfully lazy device. If you can manage to lift it to head level, the ungainly weight of the thing will bring it down on your target with little energy from you, just enough to steer. Our procession looks like a group of destructive schoolboys, bored from our rampage and now slicing forward because there is nothing better to do and we are already headed in this direction. Lackluster lifting and slicing, eyes roving everywhere but on what we are doing.
The sun is an occasional visitor now, a nosy next door neighbor that peeks in from time to time. The jungle roof spreads wide, those same leafy branches I saw earlier matched now by giant cousins thirty feet overhead. The gourds are non existent once the light levels drop, their parent vines sprawling away from us toward the ocean, the sun, and the sea air. Smith finds a depression in the jungle floor, roughly linear, leading inward away from the water. The ground at the base of the depression squishes and makes sucking noises as we tread over it.
"A stream?" I ask, looking at Smith for an answer. The crater had water at its base too, and the plant life covered it so completely and drank from it so deeply that the island sprouted botanical oddities, coiled birch trees with the fruit of Eden that unfurled with the tide to drink in life and anything foolish enough to be caught in its maw. None of the plants here have the quiet malice of the crater island. I take one of the small bottles that I brought with me and hold it in my fist while I push into the ground at my feet. The tangled leafy ground covering gives like a mattress and a small pool of water forms in the indentation. I catch up a sample of it in the bottle and hold it up to the fickle light streaming in through a small break in the ceiling. The water looks fairly clear, there are flecks of mud and vegetation that a good boiling or iodine might clear up. I sniff at it. I can not detect any of the metallic tang that I associate with the sea water of this place. Then again, I think, I might not even notice it anymore. The smell is so faint when I can detect it, perhaps it has faded into the background. Regardless, I cap the bottle and stow it away for study later.
Smith and the others move further up the miniature ravine while I delay with my sampling. I move away from the center of the depression and follow after them. I notice that Smith and Caleb also hug the sides, staying as far from the moist center of the path we are following as possible. Sink, I think. Sink sank, and I recall the suddenness with which the man disappeared from view. This water is different, though. These plants are not opening up beneath us, they are not welcoming the change of day, unwinding to let the sea, lifeblood of that crater island, into a welcoming embrace. However, I still do not walk up the center of the path.
After twenty minutes of easy hiking we come to an invisible waterfall. The ravine slopes suddenly, raises itself at a near vertical angle for about four feet. The team exits the ravine and walks around the interruption. The plants near the break glisten. The water is so near the surface I expect to see a small pool of it at the base of the toy cliff. Beyond the unseen falls, the jungle opens into small lake. Here, finally, is a pool of water that is not the sea. Each of us in turn make ohing and ahing noises as we crest the small bank out of the hidden river and gaze out onto an alien oasis.
Great trees resembling weeping willows ring the water, draping their plethora of thin fingers to dangle idly in the water at their feet. The canopy breaks here and the sun claims the territory in full. We move quietly along the bank, alert for creatures that might call this paradise home. Hidden beneath the curtains of the willows are bunches of fruit hanging lengthwise from knotted attachments. The fruit resembles two pairs glued together at their bulbous ends, somehow softened and merged together and then pulled slowly from either end. They are as long as bananas, sweep flawlessly to a barley discernible bulge at their center and then return symmetrically to a point. Their similarities are obvious to everyone and it is not long before we are again stuffing our sacks with bunches of the double sided fruit.
I approach Smith while the rest of the men are occupied with collecting potential food. "Still no game." I say. "Not so much as a bug."
"That might be a good thing." Smith says squinting against the glare of the sun off of the water. "Prey means predators, and bugs mean diseases. We are lucky to have yet to contend with either." He chuckles. "Besides, we haven’t seen any snakes yet either. And that, my friend, is a great comfort to me."
"Me too." I do not like snakes much either. They have a way of moving that sends shivers of fear through me unlike the ghasts of the previous night. The motions of a snake in movement are a call back to ancient days and forgotten eras in the world that I knew. Akin to crocodiles, they are an older race of things that should have been destroyed with the coming of mice, mammals, and men. It is the lost places on our Earth, the wastelands and badlands and wetlands that still retain remnants of forgotten times where only the reptiles have the capacity to survive. When such creatures come to light within the comfort of my evolved world, I want to scream and fire a gun. Yes, definitely a good thing that there are no snakes about.
"What are you thinking about?" I ask, breaking the silence descending upon us. It is the sort of direct question that usually goes unsaid between us. This shelter from the calm storm awaiting us beyond the beach has me off my center.
"Our bags are full. We should get a few jugs of this water and head back to the Centurion. First Officer is going to want to get a look at what we found and probably send out a few more teams." I nod and hitch my bag higher onto my shoulder. I already collected a jar of the water and secured it to my pack. Smith calls out to the other men and gathers them around him. We cinch our sacks and leave the oasis behind us, making good time as we retrace our path through the jungle to the beach and our waiting boat.
The beach is populated with passengers and cheery smiles and laughter abounded once again. Someone has found a ball and a spirited game of some variety I can not discern is afoot between a group of young men and women. We trudge past all of this, once more out of place with our sweat stained shirts and long knives steeped in the blood of the jungle. We are pirates tromping through paradise, although no one raises a cry and no one runs in fear. I laugh and mutter, "Pirates are an evil known, what awaits us all is far more fearful than the known." Several of the men give me strange looks. I laugh even harder, expecting some of those salty dogs to cross himself and spit.
The First Officer is pleased when we return. "You are back early. Good news, I take it?" We recount the mission and hand over our booty. The First Officer starts issuing orders to groups of crew near him. In short order, three more teams are under way with instructions to gather more food and return to the ship. Smith and I take a break for a few hours. When one of the teams returns with more goods, we take our team out again and hump through the jungle to the oasis. Most of the willows are picked clean. We see evidence of some of the teams ranging beyond the oasis and follow suit. Soon we pick up on another channel bed and follow it to another large pool of water, albeit smaller than the first great pond. The willows are in evidence about this one too and we have our quota without cleaning a third of the trees.
The sun is nearing the horizon now, but the beach is nearly as packed as when we passed it earlier in the day. There are a few bonfires going now, some industrious folk had gathered and dried enough of the jungle leavings to light a beacon visible for miles. The smoke has an acrid tang to it, like something besides plants are burning. I look at the sand and kicked my feet through it, it looks the same as ever, soft, pliant, empty. I hear shouting and whistles and other noises I attribute to a church crowd before a fiery sermon as we pass the people by on our way to our boat; soft, pliant, and empty as the sand, I think. One of the other teams is getting ready to shove off as we arrive.
"What’s going on over there?" Caleb asks one of the other sailors with a gesture toward the crowd.
"The idiots." The man spits and makes a rude gesture toward the crowd. "They say that they are staying here. They think they have found paradise and want to be shut of the Centurion. Ingrates. We’re well shut of them, I think." He spits again.
"What?!!" Caleb looks startled. "They think they can survive here?"
"They say they have food and now water thanks to your ranging. No bugs, no snakes, paradise." It is not a terrible line of reasoning, I think. I am surprised that Caleb looks as shocked as he does. Perhaps he sees the Centurion as his only home and can not understand any feeling to the counter, especially now that we are all adrift. We cling to what we know, often in the face of monumental stupidity. Soft, pliant, empty. A whiff of that acrid smoke hits me again. I look toward the nearest fire. The flames are flickering orange and bright, but every once in a while I think I see a flash of green. I shake my head to clear it, the day is longing for night.
"Let them have their fun. When the fires burn low, they will come back. These people like their hot meals." Smith directs us into the boat and we head back to the Centurion. Once up the side, we hand our bags off to waiting stewards. I get a nod from Smith and turn to Caleb.
"We are done for the night, Caleb." I say. "Tell the First Officer that we will see him in the morning." Night is coming soon, and the two of us have no intention of getting caught up within it.
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