It was damp. It was hot, sticky, muggy, buggy, but
mostly it was damp. My hair was stuck to my head, my shirt clung to my back like
some sort of strange suctioned sheet.
We walked for two and a half days before we reached
the cave that we had been looking for, we called it Beest Mond Grot or the Beast’s Mouth cave as the protruding rocks
at the entrance to the cavern appeared ready to clamp down on unsuspecting prey
that wandered through, and the vines that wrapped around it seemed to twitch on
its own like a cat’s hair when frightened. Samuel began to shout about how rich
he was going to be, and sprinted toward the mouth of the cave where already the
glimmer of rubies was visible, unfortunately he only made it a few steps before
his screams of joy turned to terror as his feet and legs were engulfed by a
hidden pit of quicksand surrounding the cave and his struggling only made him
sink quickly to his death.
With our small company now slightly smaller, and an
air of gloom surrounding us, we moved to a safe distance, where the cave was in
sight but the quicksand would not be stumbled upon in the darkness of night,
and set up camp. I didn’t sleep that night, I am not sure anyone did for more
than a few short minutes, between the thoughts of the previous day and shrieks
of the night, one could barely close their eyes.
Lewis noticed them first, these dark shadows peering
out from behind the brush, their eyes wide with a mixture of terror and
curiosity. It seemed the natives had finally come to visit. It quickly became
clear that they had no intention of violence but their sharp machetes gave it
away that they could fight if needed. Lewis began rambling off his rather small
vocabulary of one of the more common African languages and gestured around
wildly; it seemed we had gotten lucky and the natives appeared to at least
comprehend that we were miners and could not enter the cave without assistance,
nor had we anything to trade with them or other tribes if we could not secure
any rubies. An older looking man barked an order that no one understood and
three of the other natives darted off to the cave and quickly leaped around the
quicksand until they reached the mouth of the cave. It appeared our group had
found a way to get what we needed.
This went on for a while, the natives coming by every
morning with fruit and nuts, or occasionally some horned, forest creature, and
every night with a small portion of rubies. However a problem became evident,
we were not getting enough of the valuable gems to pay for the expenses of
travel. The natives saw no reason to bring more that a small amount of this
rock to us because all we ‘needed’ it for was trade for the food. The only
reason they brought it at all was because Lewis insisted we give them something
for the food and help. Our attempts to gain more of the resource were not
successful and thus we turned to more drastic measures.
The violence began on a small scale, with yelling and
threatening with guns, but after a number of weeks, we would tie some of their
people up or cut them with the bayonets on our guns. While they honored their
values and brought us food, they stopped assisting with hunting and the rubies
they gathered were in poorer quality but higher quantity. It was as if out
violent nature was tarnishing the pure sheen of the gems.
The year dragged on as time meandered by, and with it
came the deaths of two other company members. Phillippe was bit by a spider
while searching for berries, and we only found him because his smell carried
far enough from where the berries grew to the camp. Lewis perished when he attempted
one too many times to order the chief of the tribe to gather more food and
minerals. With Lewis dead we had no means of communication and the situation
only deteriorated further. On the twelfth month, we had little food and were
constantly fending off attacks, we almost ran out of ammo in fact.
As one might imagine, leaving the camp was a day we
all looked forward too, but when the day came there was no laughing, we walked
through the bloodstained brush to get back to the river that connected to the
ocean. The forest was no longer filled with joyful birds as they had been
scared off or eaten long ago. The shine in the cave had gone and it appeared a
vast chasm. It seemed that even the flowers had wilted with all the cigar
smoke. The remaining native tribe members were weak from disease of suffering
injuries, the land had suffered.
But we were profitable.
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