I instructed my boy Miok to stay there and skin the bandicoot, as the entire carcass would be a burden to carry. He was to finish the task and then catch up to us as we continued to the south. But before we were even out of sight of Miok, another bandicoot of the same type approached us. By this time I was quite curious and told Charles to refrain from shooting. Again I thought the creature must have failed to see us, perhaps due to poor sight. Or perhaps it was remarkably stupid. The wretched creature approached us until it was merely a few feet away. It then stopped and settled on its belly upon the ground, as if it were too tired to go any further. I nudged it with my boot and it did nothing more than shift its position a few inches.
I was completely confounded by this strange behavior, as was Charles, and it seemed to drive Amborn and Loo into a state of agitation. They talked with excitement to each other, ignoring Charles and myself as if they had forgotten we were there. I inquired to Amborn as to his opinion on the matter, and he talked to me so rapidly that I could understand none of his words. With some perseverance, I was able to calm him enough to communicate effectively. Apparently he and Loo had heard stories from other members of his tribe of such strange animals living in this place, but they had not had the opportunity to see them with their own eyes. This made me curious, so I inquired as to what other stories about this place they might have been told. Amborn discussed this briefly with Loo and they actually laughed together before he returned his attention to me. He explained that others of his tribe feared this place. Some had apparently travelled here to hunt and had not returned. But he made it clear that he and Loo did not hold the same fears, and I realized that these young men were, in this respect, similar to the boys of Europe. They were skeptical of the opinions of the older generation. Perhaps this is a universal characteristic of young men of all cultures.
Nevertheless, this new information caused me to again consider Penapul’s motives for sending us to such a place. I hadn’t long to contemplate such matters, however, because from the corner of my eye I detected yet another creature moving about. I looked at the spot and saw what appeared to be a tree kangaroo, although at that moment it was on the ground. Instead of foolishly approaching as the two bandicoots had done, this creature sat upon its haunches and carefully watched us. Having never seen a tree kangaroo, except in illustrations, I was quite anxious to add it to my collection. I attempted to direct Charles’ attention to where I had seen it, so that he might shoot it, but by the time he had turned around it had disappeared among the thickest vegetation. We walked to the spot and looked about, but the creature was not to be found.
And then, as if this place were determined to confound us even more, a most alarming thing happened. Amborn crouched low to the ground and gesticulated for us to do the same. He pointed and said the word, abokhai, which I knew to mean “man” or “hunter.” Charles and I looked to where he pointed, but we saw nothing. I was somewhat skeptical, as we had seen no signs of a village or any human presence at all in the region. Unlike the area near Amborn’s village, there were no footpaths, stumps of chopped trees, territory markings, or any other indications that people existed here. After a minute or so Amborn must have decided the abokhai was gone, because he rose to his feet and proceeded to describe the man, using his hands to draw upon his own body various ornamentations the man had worn. He used his word for “green parrot” to indicate the type of feathers the man wore upon his head.
Notwithstanding Amborn’s agitated state and his tribe’s inclination to fantastical beliefs, I considered the possibility that he had indeed seen a man there. Amborn had usually been reliable regarding most matters. Perhaps it was merely a hunter from another tribe, who upon seeing us decided to avoid conflict or perhaps was frightened by the strange occurrence of two white men.
I decided we should continue moving south as we had planned, and we had made another half mile of progress with no incident of any interest occurring, when Miok finally caught up to us. As I turned to watch him approach, I saw that not only had he failed to bring with him his sack of supplies and collected specimens, but he also did not have the skin of the bandicoot. His hands were red from the bandicoot’s blood, but all he carried with him was his skinning knife in one hand and his chopper in the other. Miok was in a state of agitation, and he claimed to have seen not only one, but three abokhai, or hunters. Apparently, two of them had been watching him when he saw them, and he had called out a greeting to them, but they had not responded. He then had seen a third abokhai watching from the opposite direction, upon which he abandoned his supplies and the bandicoot and ran to find us.
Unwilling to leave the specimens and supplies to be stolen by these hunters, if indeed they did exist, I decided we should return as a group to fetch them. I had little fear of being attacked by these strangers, as Amborn, Charles, and myself each carried a loaded gun.
As I now reflect on the events that happened next, they are confusing at best, and at worst they signify that my senses have possibly been attacked and made unreliable due to some spoiled food or intoxicating substance I may have recently swallowed. But I feel no other ill effects, and Charles assures me that he has seen and experienced the very same events. So I wish to write them down while my memory of them is fresh, and perhaps later as I review them with diligence and rigor, I may determine them to be mere symptoms of our exhaustion, dehydration, or some other condition.
As a group armed with three rifles, we returned to the place where Miok had stopped to skin the bandicoot. However, finding the exact location was not as easy as expected. It seemed we had not chopped the vegetation as low as I had thought, and finding the spot required some searching. When we eventually found it, the bandicoot carcass and skin were missing, with only a bloody area to show where they had lain upon the ground. However, it was Miok’s sack of specimens and supplies that I found to be most mystifying. The bag was there on the ground, but its outermost edges seemed to have disintegrated, having been transformed into small dark particles resembling soil. The portion of the bag in the center appeared to be intact, but there was a ring of this soil-like substance about the outer edges, as if the bag were decaying and returning to its basic elements of nature on an unnatural schedule rapid beyond all reason.
I asked Charles to describe in his own words what he was witnessing, and this corroborated my own observations. Even as we stood and watched, this unnatural process of decay continued before our eyes, until the entire sack and its contents were no more than a pile of brown matter upon the ground, even giving off a smell that could not be mistaken for any other than that of moist, fertile soil.
My boys seemed as mystified by this sight as Charles and I were, and they became quiet, whispering soft words between them that I could not discern. It was then that I saw one of the strange hunters with my own eyes. Although the man was partly concealed by a tree, he was near, and I saw that his appearance was quite striking, with handsome, well-defined physiognomy and clear skin that showed no signs of nutritional distress, scars, or disease. Numerous green parrot feathers were fastened to his hair, protruding upward in various directions, and there was pale face paint around the area of his eyes, looking somewhat like a mask. He wore little ornamentation or clothing, other than a cylindrical gourd fitted upon his sexual organ, shorter than those worn by the men of the Humboldt Bay tribe. One of his hands gripped a spear made of wood, its sharpened tip darkened from hardening over a fire. For a moment I gazed at him, and he at me, as I attempted to discern whether he was simply a product of my imagination. Just as I had acquired my wits enough to inform Charles of the man’s presence, the native retreated and seemed to disappear into the vegetation surrounding him. I continued to gaze upon the spot, but he did not reappear.
I was then forced to admit that indeed we were being followed and observed by natives, and as we had all been distressed by what we had witnessed and had lost some of our supplies, I decided it best to return to our camp for the day. The strange and shy natives would hope
fully be gone from the area by the next morning when we would return to continue collecting on our southward trail.
However, that was not the last confounding event, as we soon realized the path we had chopped with much effort was not as clear as I remembered it to be. In fact, we soon found ourselves searching for any sign of the path at all, as if we had become lost, or as if the path had never existed. I then found evidence of our chopping, in the form of a plant stem that had been severed, but it appeared that lateral branches lower on the stem had grown upward, so that the remaining plant was now just as tall as it had been before it was chopped. The result of this was that the path was no longer discernable. I found other similar chopped plants that had grown tall again, but these required considerable effort to locate, making it impossible to follow the path in such a way. Hence we were forced to find our way back to our camp without the benefit of a path. This took some time and was slowed by the fact that earlier we had not taken note of landmarks, assuming we would have no need for them.
My native boys have a heightened directional sense, though, allowing them to travel dense jungle better than European men could, and we found our camp before darkness set in, bringing great relief to my mind.
As my boys prepared a meal, I discussed with Charles the events of the day in an attempt to elucidate any overlooked details, and perhaps to find comfort in the rigor of analysis.
Note: Again I have included this conversation exactly as it took place, to help readers understand the decisions that were made leading up to subsequent fateful events.
“Perhaps,” said I, “it would be helpful if we were to separate each of the puzzling sights we have seen into their rightful categories. The appearance of the strange hunters, for example, may be entirely unrelated to our becoming lost, or to the unnatural transformation of Miok’s sack of supplies into soil. Cause and effect should not be assumed without compelling evidence.”
“Correct,” said Charles. “We should consider only the facts as we have observed them. All else is lather and prunella (flimsy). Let us first consider this native you saw. I believe you said he had a rather strange appearance.”
“Yes, although putting it to words may be cumbersome.” I thought on this for a moment. “I am compelled to say that he seemed, well, out of place here. There was something about his appearance that set him apart from the Papuan natives I have seen thus far. A primitive and barbarous life here, existing naked and unwashed in the wildest jungle, results in a characteristic appearance that, until now, I believed to be without exception.” I waved my hand at my boys. “Consider Amborn’s tribe. They live in a place where they have access by trade to items from more civilized places, and yet even the younger boys and girls show the telltale signs of weathering, injury, privations, and disease. I imagine most of them cannot expect to live beyond thirty or forty years at most. But this man I saw, this hunter—it was as if I were looking upon the face and skin of a young boy, but he was a man, with a man’s eyes. He gazed upon me with a look that I find hard to describe. His eyes held no fear, only curiosity, as if he were seeing something remarkable he had not seen before, in the same way I might have looked upon the tree kangaroo I saw today.”
For some seconds Charles looked at me before speaking. “I wish I had seen the man myself,” he said. “I imagine he was simply a young hunter who had never had the occasion of seeing white men before. This explanation would comfort me in its unassuming simplicity.”
“For now I will accept that,” I said with some uncertainty.
“I can’t imagine that they have any cause for obstinacy,” Charles said. “Should it please the pigs (if God is willing), these natives may even be willing to assist us in our endeavor. I hope that they approach us so that I might see them with my own eyes.”
“We will know soon enough,” said I. “Let us next consider the chopped plants growing to their original height in a matter of mere hours. I suggest that we assume this phenomenon, rather than being attributed to botanical tissue growth, which seems impossible at the rate we witnessed, to instead be a result of a tropism.”
“A tropism?”
“Yes, yes. My friend, Mr. Wallace, has discussed tropisms, as they are of particular interest to Charles Darwin. The word refers to a tendency of some plants to move toward or away from a stimulus, such as sunlight. Some plants can change their position and angle by expanding the cells on one side of the stem, thus bending toward the sun much more quickly than could be possible with normal growth. And it is possible that some plants might respond thus to trauma.”
“Such as being chopped with a blade,” said Charles.
“Precisely. I have heard this theory referred to as traumatropism, and it may explain how the lower stems of the plants we chopped were able to compensate in such a way, perhaps expanding the cells on the bottom side of each stem, causing them to bend upward.”
Charles appeared to be unconvinced of this, but he said, “So we have adequately—or perhaps I should say tolerably—explained the native hunters and the chopped vegetation. And the unenergetic behavior of the bandicoots can be explained in many ways, such as disease or the fearlessness of being unaware of the threat of man. But what possible hypothesis can we batter through to explain a sack decomposing before our eyes?”
We contemplated this in silence for some minutes.
“The tropical climate holds many mysteries yet unsolved,” said I. “The atmosphere here is quite warm and pure. Perhaps this, as well as some fertile or abounding characteristic of the soil, results in unusually industrious organisms of putrefaction.”
Charles nodded slightly while frowning, indicating his doubts. “Or perhaps the elusive native you saw is in some way responsible. Perhaps he applied some softening ointment or poultice that his tribe may use to hasten decay.” His doubtful frown remained.
Finally I sighed in defeat. “I have seen nothing like it before, and my thoughts fail me. Perhaps a decent night of sleep and the light of a new day will renew our perspective on this. Perhaps tomorrow, Charles, the answer will find us.”
“Or perhaps,” said he, “we will find that we have been allured by the blue roses of an impossible conundrum.”
That is an account of today’s events. Even at this late hour, as I sit upon my primitive bed, writing by the light of my palm oil lamp and contemplating a plan for tomorrow, I have little confidence in our explanations for what we have witnessed. My curiosity implores me to set out to the south again, perhaps marking our passage rather than chopping a path, so that we can further investigate any secrets this strange place may yield.
8
April 21, 1868
It seems almost certain these words will be my last, as I have little hope of waking to see another day once I close my eyes to sleep. Furthermore, it is equally probable that these words will never be read. If by some miraculous turn of fate they are found and read by civilized eyes, they may be dismissed as the rantings of a dying man. If you do find yourself in possession of this notebook, please know that I, Samuel Thaddeus Inwood, English gentleman and man of science, am truly sorry for the pain of bereavement forced upon my parents, my betrothed, the family of my assistant Charles Newman, and the families of my boys Amborn, Miok, and Loo. Perhaps most importantly, please know that here, in this darkest jungle, there remains hidden a most mysterious phenomenon. It is a substance of no great beauty or magnificence. But this is misleading, because at the least it holds the most peculiar properties, and at most it may be the humble disguise of God Himself.
I must get on with it, lest I pass away before explaining.
Following yesterday’s strange events, we determined early this morning to try again to travel south from our base camp to continue collecting. I tore some calico into strips and tied these to trees to mark our way.
After an hour of travelling to the south, during which we had shot several new birds, I saw a tree kangaroo in the branches above us. It gazed upon me in such a way as to make me think it may have
been the very same tree kangaroo I had seen the previous day. It had the same look in its eyes—curious but not afraid. This time the creature made no attempt to run away, and I pointed it out to Charles, who always kept his gun loaded with a ball. Charles took aim and shot, and the tree kangaroo fell to the ground. We approached it, and to all appearances it was dead.
Just as I congratulated Charles on an excellent shot, I heard a disturbance in the trees behind us, followed by a snorting sound from Charles I had never heard him make before. I turned to him and to my horror saw that he had been run through from behind by a native’s spear. With a wretched expression upon his face, he groped at the bloody point of the spear protruding from his abdomen. I desperately tried cocking the hammer on my gun, but it slipped from my thumb, and my number eight shot fired uselessly into the ground. The owner of the spear pulled it free. Charles staggered and turned to face him. The native immediately ran him through again, this time through the throat. Charles fell to the ground, twisting wildly about, struggling to breathe but inhaling only his own blood.
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