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| Akim Raschka, (Wiki.) |
Zach Neal
After
the cooling breezes and azure seas of the crossing, and he was lucky to have
good weather for that, the jungle clad hills and olive waters of the Orinoco
were a stark contrast. So was the heat. As the old steamer chugged along, painfully
wheezing its way upstream, there was little to do but to try and stay cool and
get to know the other members of the party.
The
stout and sweaty Senor Hernandez owned the boat they were on, skippered by a
bald-headed, fiercely mustachioed captain constantly chewing on an unlit cigar.
For some reason no one could quite catch the name, no matter how many times
they asked. The captain’s nephew, a boy about a year younger than he, Paolo,
was the only other hand apparently required for what was almost a small ship.
There
was his uncle, of course, looking raffish in a newly-sprouted beard and a bush
jacket with an incongruous straw hat of local manufacture. Khaki shorts with a
hundred pockets, Argyll socks and desert boots. A monocle on the right eye and
a watch-chain hanging. That was his uncle, all right.
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| Weird Uncle Harry. |
It
struck Jeremy that he was there to dig, all expenses paid of course.
Syrmes
had broad shoulders, a bull neck and looked like a handy lad in a pinch.
This
was even more so regarding Kevin Smith. Uncle Harry had introduced him as a
former soldier. He’d been at the Somme. This one had a couple of scars on his
upper lip.
His
role was guide and adventurer. He was being paid for his time, which was sort
of unique among them.
Apparently
he’d been up the river before on unspecified errands, in Jeremy’s opinion
either gold or gems…something to do with poaching perhaps. Selling guns and
whiskey to the natives, although he might have been thinking of a different
frontier.
This
one could look after himself.
Gerald
Day, the perfect gentleman, was paying his own way as he put it. With an
interest in antiquities and primitive South American peoples in particular, he
was an occasional journalist.
He
and Uncle Harry had some sort of gentlemen’s agreement on an exclusive, whether
or not they ever found anything. Venezuela, and especially the hinterland, was
like the other side of the moon to the average reader. According to Mister Day,
people ate up a certain kind of sensationalized adventure.
Most
interesting of all, were Mister and Missus O’Dell. An American millionaire,
easily late fifties or early sixties, Peter was a collector. He was looking
forward to the thrill of discovering evidence of an unknown people and culture,
rumoured to exist in the high hills a hundred miles inland. It would make his
name as he put it. His wife, Melody, quite a bit younger, was the most
perfectly decorative woman Jeremy had seen in quite some time. Yet there was the
spark of a deeper intelligence in behind those quiet grey eyes, and it was
interesting to note the sick thrill when he caught her examining him in some
kind of assessment.
Hopefully
he didn’t appear too callow in her eyes, although he knew he was young—very
young.
Especially
when she looked at him like that—
That
didn’t necessarily make him a fool.
So
far, nothing much had happened, other than being sleepless from hot steamy
nights, queasy from sleeping on a boat, always in motion, bitten by bugs, afraid
to drink the water, and almost afraid of going ashore at all. Not after seeing
the biggest snake in the world poke its head up and then swim along, outpacing
the boat on her port side and then disappearing into the low, overhanging
branches and into the dappled green shadows where land presumably met water at
some mysterious and unknown point.
Once
he’d seen a half a dozen crocodiles, sunning themselves on a sandbar, and heard
one or two stories of unknown creatures taking people in the night, he’d been
pretty much convinced.
(...end of excerpt.)
