Liot Literary

www.connorscripts.com

The Gift

I don’t know if I can or want to go on. It would be so easy to just lie down and never wake up. The oppressive humidity sucks my strength; it makes every blistered stroke of the paddle a tortured effort. What’s left of my sweat-soaked shirt rubs against painful mosquito and other insect bites. It’s like wearing a wire brush. Flies buzz around my head and weeks of matted beard crawl with life. My sanity is on the verge of collapse if not already departed.

The village elder’s so-called gift mocks me from its leather pouch in the bow of the canoe. Why did he give it to me? Why spare me? I don’t know. Perhaps he meant it as a warning for me to take back to dissuade others from venturing into his territory. As he and his people didn’t speak my language and I didn’t speak theirs, I can only guess. I’ve brought it this far. I need it as evidence that the expedition reached the Chaura tribe. I owe it to the rest of the team. With gritted and rotting teeth I paddle on.

The sponsors in the City of London can have the damned thing if I make it back.

I am the only survivor though my survival for much longer is far from certain. If the heat or fever don’t kill me, I fear the crocodiles or piranhas will during the day or the creatures that stalk in the night will dine on my emaciated body. My addled brain plays games with itself trying to decide which death it prefers.

I dread the sunset and what comes after. In the tropics night and day brings only the briefest of  interlude.

Exhausted, I manage to steer the canoe to the bank of the muddy Amazon. It took six months from Manaus, and twelve hundred miles to navigate to the Chaura. I’ve long since lost count of how many days, weeks or months have passed since I began the journey back.

On the bank with a supreme effort I pull the canoe half out of the water wary of crocodiles I may have intruded upon. I hook the pouch on a branch next to the canoe while I climb a fig tree. It gives me nightmares and can’t bear to have it close while I sleep. Though plentiful, I won’t eat any figs. My guts are bad enough already. I settle for the rest of the snake I caught that morning for my supper.

And then it rains, again. They say it rains a lot in Manchester. It does. But not like in the Amazon. It’s an exaggeration to say the downpour is like standing under the Niagara Falls though that it is how it feels. The deluge almost washes me off my perch. As sudden as it came, the rain goes. I wriggle myself into a semi-comfortable position next to the trunk and fall asleep to the contra-lullaby from a cacophony of insects and screams of night creatures as they meet their doom.

What’s that? Something on my bare leg. Daylight filters through the canopy. A two-metre-long bushmaster snake slithers over my left leg. I freeze. I hold my breath. One bite would kill me. Slow and painful would be my demise. It’s staring at me with hypnotic eyes perhaps wondering if it should strike. I’ve come so far just to die in a fig tree. I daren’t move a muscle. Sweat drips from my forehead. It turns away and continues its quest into the next tree. My head swims from the lack of oxygen. I suck in air.

Climbing down and wary of crocodiles, I drink from the pools of water caught in the leaves of palms and other flora. I’ve been living on snakes, fruit, and an occasional bird when I could catch one. All raw. And I am still alive if the state I am in can be called living.

Heaving the canoe on its side to empty the rainwater from the downpour takes all my strength but I manage. Too tired to start paddling, I unhook the pouch and put it back in the canoe. I’ll sit here for a few minutes to recuperate before setting off on another full day.

A noise! Not a jungle noise. A deep rumbling. And then round the bend puffs a steam launch towing three canoes. I saw launches like this one in Manaus. They sail between that town and the coast. I understood they didn’t venture far up the Amazon. How far am I from Manaus?

I want to shout but nothing comes out. Standing up in the canoe I wave my arms like a madman.

The engine tone changes. The launch slows. At the wheel under a tatty canvas bimini a man in a Panama hat smokes a cigar. He waves back. More men at the stern look like soldiers.

I fall to my knees sobbing. Have I done it? Have I survived? Gripping the side of the canoe I force myself back to my feet and under control. Two men climb into one of the canoes and paddle towards me. One is a European in a pith helmet and the other a native Amazonian.

“Who are you?” says an English voice as they come ashore.

Who am I? I try to speak but nothing comes out. Who am I? Not the Lord Algernon Blackthorn of  Mossington who set out on this expedition. Now I’m a vermin infested skeleton version of that man.

Both men stare at me waiting for an answer.

“He not from Amazon tribe. He like you,” says the native Amazonian.

“My God!” says the other man. “Are you British?”

I manage to nod while holding on to the side of the canoe to stop from falling.

“Lieutenant Charles Morgan, Royal Navy. The British ambassador sent me with a contingent of naval personnel to find out what happened to the Sutcliffe expedition. Have you seen them?”

I nod as I slump down in the canoe and stare at the leather pouch.

“Take him back to the boat. I doubt we’ll find much from him for a while,” says Lieutenant Morgan. “What the hell he is doing so far up the Amazon?”

“Could he be with the Sutcliffe expedition?” says the Native Amazonian.

“I hope not. It doesn’t bode well for the others if he is.”

I shake my head unable to speak.

Grief and relief overwhelm me. I am saved but the sole survivor. Guilt gnaws at my insides. I let them help me out of the canoe. Between them, they half carry me towards their canoe. I stop and put up a feeble resistance.

“What’s wrong old chap?” says the lieutenant.

I pull myself from their grip and stagger back to my canoe, reach in and lift out the pouch.

The lieutenant offers his hands to take the pouch. I cling on to it, pressing it close to my chest and shake my head.

“What’s in there?” says Lieutenant Morgan.

I can’t speak. Just a guttural sound comes out.

“All right. You can bring it with you. Plenty of time to discuss that later. Let’s got off this bank before the crocodiles have us for lunch,” says the lieutenant.

They paddle back to the launch with me still gripping the pouch tight to my chest. My eyes dart around like a hunted animal.

I have so many questions but not the strength to ask them nor answer theirs. They help me aboard the launch.

“Who’s this?” says the man behind the wheel who the lieutenant introduces as Senor Alvarez.

“I think he’s British,” says the lieutenant. “He may have seen the Sutcliffe expedition.”

I grip the lieutenant’s arm and nod.

“He’s gone loco,” says Alvarez, and if I could speak I would agree with him.

“One of the lads can make him a cup of tea and we’ll see what he can tell us.”

The men at the stern are in Royal Navy bush shirts with pith helmets. A rack of Lee Enfield rifles lines the side of the boat. If they think those guns are effective against the Chaura or other tribes they are in for a fatal surprise.

I’m helped below into a cabin. A sailor gives me a mug of tea. I drink. It’s so good. Civilisation!

“Gotta get them rags off you, mate, when you finish your tea,” he says.

Tea finished, I stare at him, still clutching my leather pouch.

“It’s all right mate. Nobody’s gonna nick it.”

I shake my head. Two sailors grab me. One rips off what’s left of my shirt.

“Je-sus!” he says. “You’ve had a bad time mate.”

I’m shoved into a small empty cabin. Two sailors follow me in and pin me to the deck before ripping off my filthy, tattered pants. They set to work on me with scrubbing brushes and carbolic soap. It hurst like hell but I don’t resist. I do not have the strength.

One takes my head in a vice like grip while another cuts my hair and beard and shaves me. All the while I hold on tight to my leather pouch. But I don’t struggle. I have enough sense to accept I need cleaning up.

The lieutenant comes in. “How’s he doing?”

“We’ve cleaned him up. He weren’t happy about that, sir.”

I’m given a clean shirt and pants. My eyes dart around the small room crammed with the lieutenant and two sailors as I stand naked before them. My sense of dignity slowly returns and I back against the bulwark, put the pouch at my feet and pull on the pants and the shirt. I pick up the pouch.

“Are you ready to try to answer some questions?” says the lieutenant.

I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. I nod.

“Bring him up on deck and give him something to eat. And a rum ration.”

I’m taken up on the deck and sat at a small table with my pouch in front of me. The lieutenant sits. A sailor brings me an open tin of sardines, a biscuit, and a tot of rum.

I take the rum. It burns its way down into my belly bringing me an immediate sense of euphoria which doesn’t last. With my eyes on the lieutenant and around the boat I turn to the sardines, pick out one at a time and eat them. The biscuit I leave as my teeth would not cope.

The lieutenant waits with patience for me to finish and says: “Have you seen the Sutcliffe expedition?”

The scrub, shave, tea, rum, and sardines have dragged me back from the edge of insanity.

“I’m. . . I’m Algernon Blackthorn. Part. . . part of the expedition,” I manage to say without the unnecessary addition of my title.

“Good Lord! Where are the others?”

“All dead,” I say hanging my head in shame.

“How?”

“Fever, poisoned arrows, and the jungle. I. . . I’m the only survivor.”

“Colonel Sutcliffe is dead?” says the lieutenant.

I nod.

“What is in your pouch?”

I stare at the lieutenant. It’s time to share my burden. With shaking hands I open the pouch and empty the contents onto the table. The lieutenant leaps from his seat and backs away.

“What the hell is that?” he says, wide eyed.

I glare at the shrunken head. “Colonel Sutcliffe.”

Click HERE to return to Short Stories