THE FIRST THING to strike Beryl Snowhill when cohesive thought returned to her was a comforting sensation of steadiness, silence and tranquillity!
After forty-eight hours, during which the Amazon yacht had been pitched and tossed violently on the enormous waves raised by the hurricane, this gave her a feeling of relief.
No longer was the wind flogging the sails to shreds and finally, unless Beryl’s memory was playing her false, snapping the mast to leave the yacht at the mercy of the elements. Instead of tearing at her, it had now diminished until there was nothing more than a cooling breeze which passed over her in a way which was soothingly refreshing rather than punishing. Nevertheless, for all the improvements produced by the vastly changed weather, she found herself wishing she was not plagued by the sensation of extreme hunger. It exceeded having gone without solid food since the commencement of the hurricane and felt as if her whole digestive system had been stripped of its entire contents.
Suddenly, other thoughts began to divert Beryl from the considerations aroused by her unusual hunger.
Firstly, the surface upon which she was lying, face down and with her eyes closed, had neither the comparative comfort of her bunk nor the unyielding smooth hardness of the planks forming the deck of the Amazon yacht!
Secondly, she could feel the warmth of the sun and caress of the breeze on her bare back and legs.
Yet, as far as she could recollect, she had not removed the sou’-wester, oilskins and sea boots donned as protection against the raging elements!
Thirdly, while she could hear the sound of the waves, it was far removed from the roaring crash which had beaten at the Amazon yacht for the past two days.
Instead, there was only the soothing swish such as a gentle tide would make coming to its pacific end upon the level beach of a sandy shore.
Slowly, Beryl raised her head and forced open the gummy lids of her eyes. And closed them immediately.
After a few seconds, having shaken her head in an attempt to clear it and telling herself that all her other senses suggested her eyes had been playing tricks, she opened them again.
Her first impression was correct!
In some way—she could not imagine—Beryl found she was no longer aboard the Amazon yacht in which she, her cousin, Charlotte Topper and their maid-companion, Jill Jervis had been competing in a race from Malindi, Kenya to Madagascar.
The impression of lying on sand was correct.
She really had seen the side of a sand dune rising a few feet in front of her! Before Beryl could resume the examination of her surroundings, or think of doing anything else, she became aware of movements on either side of her.
Looking to the left, the discovery made by Beryl intensified rather than lessened the mystery.
While delighted to find her cousin was alive and apparently uninjured, Beryl was also amazed by the sight which met her gaze.
Five foot nine in height, Charlotte Topper, known to her friends as ‘Cha’,—pronounced ‘Shah’—looked to be in her early twenties and had brunette hair cut in a short urchin crop. She was very beautiful, exuding a strength of will and intelligence which did nothing to mar her features. Tanned to a rich golden bronze, her physical development was a magnificent example of feminine pulchritude. Nor were the contours of her thirty-nine, twenty-five, thirty-seven inch figure dependent upon artificial aids to create their curvaceous shape. Even lying supine and stirring as if just waking up, that was all too obvious.
The attire Cha had consisted of a scanty scarlet sharkskin halter, which left her midriff bare and had a most extreme décolleté, a pair of denim shorts justifying the designation and flat heeled black sandals with cross straps extending to just below her knees. There was a choker-type necklace of silver discs around her throat and a two inch wide bracelet of the same material about each wrist and bicep. A belt made from square segments of brass encircled her trim waist. It supported a wooden hilted sword like a Roman gladius in a sheath on its right side and at the left hung a Randall Model 2 ‘Fighting Stiletto’ knife with a concave rosewood handle and a spear point blade eight inches in length.
There was much about Cha’s appearance to puzzle Beryl. She had seen her cousin wearing the halter, shorts and knife more than once, although never the latter with the first two. However, the sandals, jewellery, belt and sword were new to her and definitely had not been on the Amazon yacht. What was more, during the hurricane, the brunette too had been wearing much more substantial and suitable raiment.
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‘Wh … Where are w … Christ! Where did this come from?’
The words, spoken with a Leicestershire accent, caused Beryl to look in the other direction and brought Cha into a sitting position.
Another source of relief and surprise was awaiting inspection by the former!
Kneeling up and feeling at her left side as if unwilling to believe the evidence of her eyes, Jill Jervis was just as skimpily arrayed as Cha, in a blue cotton halter, just as brief denim shorts and had identical footwear. She was now wearing a similar choker, but only her left arm was decorated by bracelets at wrist and bicep, Showing amazement, she was reaching across to touch the wooden hilt of the sword sheathed at the left side of the metal disc belt about her waist.
The puzzlement was fully justified.
Although Jill owned the shorts and halter, neither they nor the other items had been in her possession when she went aboard the Amazon yacht!
In her early thirties; as far as appearances went, Jill was only five foot two inches in height. Pretty, with reddish-brown hair done in a flip style, she lacked the commanding air of her companions. At one hundred and fourteen pounds, her dimensions of thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-four inches gave her a sturdily curvaceous build. Nor, as in the case or the other two, did the firm muscles which showed beneath her tanned skin cause any loss of femininity. Rather they suggested a health and strength of a high order, without in any way being detrimental to her feminine attributes.
Starting to roll over, so as to sit up and examine her surroundings, Beryl ascertained that she too had been equipped with a metal disc belt carrying a knife and sword. Coming to her feet swiftly and standing with feet spread apart, she began to investigate other things about her person which were called to her attention by her sense of touch.
Lacking some four inches of her cousin’s height, Beryl was nevertheless proportionately just a trifle better endowed physically. She conveyed the impression of being about forty years of age and in exceptionally fine physical condition. Done in a neck length pageboy fashion, her platinum blonde hair had survived the rigours of the hurricane and its aftermath—whatever that had been—without disturbance to its locks and the same applied to her companions. Her face was very beautiful. Even more than Cha’s, it bore the indefinable aura of a person with a natural flair for leadership and an inborn gift for commanding respect. Even while displaying puzzlement over their present inexplicable circumstances, she had the appearance of being a woman upon whom one could rely implicitly in any emergency.
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A glance downwards confirmed the suspicion that Beryl had already formed regarding her attire, or lack of it. She was attractively clad, if far from being over dressed, in a contour hugging and revealing white silk halter and black leather “wet look” shorts which had not been included in the luggage aboard the Amazon yacht. While it was her property, nor had the ivory handled Randall “Bear Bowie” knife which now hung sheathed at the right side of a belt made from round silver discs. A further scrutiny revealed the sword at the left side also had an ivory hilt and the bracelets gracing each bicep and wrist were gold. There was a choker around her throat, similar to those worn by her companions except—she discovered later—it was of alternating discs of silver and gold and she too was wearing black, open toed cross-strap sandals.
‘Wh … What’s happened to us?’ Jill gasped, forcing herself erect.
‘God only knows!’ Cha replied, her accent well educated and “county”, also coming to her feet and glancing at her state of attire. ‘The last thing I can remember was the mast snapping and the Amazon starting to roll over!’
‘Oh Lord, yes!’ the redhead ejaculated, staring from the brunette to the blonde. ‘Either I must have been dreaming … or I still am, but I thought … In fact, I’m sure I was being thrown overboard head first.’
Listening to her companions, Beryl felt as if an icy hand was running along her spine. She too was beginning to appreciate the full implications of what had happened aboard the yacht during the seconds following the mast snapping and going overboard. Deprived of its balance, the vessel had been completely at the mercy of the wind and waves. In fact, when everything had gone black and she remembered nothing else until she had just woken up, the Amazon was being turned turtle and throwing them all helplessly into the raging sea.
There had been no hope of survival!
Which unpalatable consideration brought up another point.
Perhaps they had not survived!
Beryl immediately threw out the somewhat unnerving thought as absolutely unacceptable.
Although Beryl was not irreligious, she had never believed in life after death!
Therefore, amazing and improbable though it appeared, the blonde was convinced she, her cousin and the maid were still very much alive.
They had been rescued from a watery grave, in some inexplicable and miraculous fashion, at the very last moment of the final second.
The conclusion certainly seemed exceptionally peculiar, but Beryl regarded it more acceptable than any alternative explanation.
Even as the blonde was arriving at her summation, she discovered the puzzling aspects of the situation were not yet exhausted!
‘What the devil!’ Cha snapped, having glanced over her shoulder for a moment then, on something she had seen registering upon her mind after she had returned her gaze to the front, looking again with what in theatrical terms was described as a “double-take”. ‘Where could those have come from?’
Turning her head from contemplating the tide of a sea as blue as the Mediterranean at its best ending leisurely upon a wide sandy beach, Beryl watched her cousin approaching the cause of the comment.
On the side of the sand dune, level with and slightly above where each of them had been lying were more weapons.
This time, however, the blonde had never seen any of them before.
Facing the positions of Cha and Jill were powerful wooden bows with the ‘recurved’ formation peculiar to Ancient Greece and back quivers filled with arrows.1 In front of Beryl rested a long handled, doubled headed axe more suitable for fighting than any pacific purpose and a crescent shaped shield also of the kind shown on paintings of Grecian warriors.
‘Where did all this stuff come from?’ Jill supplemented, in tones of awe. ‘I’ve never seen any of this jewellery, or the swords. And I haven’t had sandals like these since I was a kid in Melton Mowbray.’
‘If we weren’t wearing some of them,’ Beryl asserted quietly. ‘I’d say the weapons were props accidentally left behind by a film company which had been doing location work here.’
‘This definitely isn’t a film prop, it’s as sharp as my knife,’ Cha declared, having drawn the sword she was wearing and tested the twenty inches long “leaf pattern” blade gingerly with the ball of her thumb. Sheathing the weapon, she stepped forward and picked up the bow. Giving a tentative pluck at its tightly stretched string, she went on, ‘And this must draw at least fifty pounds, which means it’s too powerful for a prop in any film.’
While her cousin was conducting the second experiment, Beryl picked up the axe. She was impressed by its balance and gave it a swing such as would be used in combat. As she did so, she began to experience a sensation of familiarity and complete competence which induced a confident belief in being able to use it as a means of defence, should the need arise. In fact, she found herself to be so at ease with it that she considered she must have an affinity with it as a weapon. Yet she knew, despite having had considerable experience with arms of various kinds in the course of a most eventful life, she had never found the need to wield anything even remotely like a battle axe.
On the other hand, the blonde was not in the least surprised that Cha should exhibit such a knowledge of archery. Not only had the brunette competed with considerable success in numerous tournaments and hunted with bow and arrows in Africa and North America, she had also found recourse during World War II to employ such armament as a way of killing enemies rather than merely for an adjunct to competition and sport.
‘This is bloody well impossible, ma’am!’ Jill exclaimed, having followed the example of her employers by taking up the second bow. ‘You know I’ve never done any archery, except for fooling around when you and Cha were practicing. But I know, God alone knows how, I can use this one!’ For all her proven courage in the past, her expression was close to frightened as she gazed at Beryl and, despite numerous suggestions that such formality was unnecessary, once again employed the respectful honorific as she went on, ‘Ma’am, what’s happened and where are we?’
‘That’s a very good point, Jill,’ Cha claimed, then turned to her cousin for guidance as she had so often in the past. ‘And, more important, what are we going to do?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Beryl admitted frankly, setting the head of the battle axe on the ground and resting against the handle in what—although she and her companions knew this was not the case—seemed to be a posture she frequently adopted. ‘In the first place, none of us can even start to guess how, much less why or by who we’ve been brought here … wherever here might be. So there’s no point in discussing any of those points right now. What we have to do is try to find out where we are and whether there is any food and water available.’
‘You’re right about that, ma’am,’ Jill agreed. ‘I’ve never felt so hungry!’
‘Or I,’ Cha seconded.
‘It seems we’re all in the same boat then,’ Beryl said pensively and returned her attention to planning their immediate future. ‘We can’t see anything to help us down on the beach, so we’ll find out if there’s a more promising view from the top of the dunes. And, as whoever brought us here obviously considered it necessary to supply these weapons, we’d better take them along. I seem to have been presented with the axe and shield, Cha, so I’ll keep them unless you or Jill would rather trade them for your bow?’
‘I know I could use them quite well, but don’t ask me how I know it,’ the brunette answered, swinging the quiver on to her back before she gave a thought to what she was doing. However, the usual problem she encountered when examining unfamiliar equipment did not occur. The flights of the arrows rose above her left shoulder as she set led it into position. ‘And, going by the way this strap fits me and it’s obviously been made for a left handed person, I believe I’m intended to use this bow.’
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‘I’ve never even seen an axe like that and I haven’t used a bow much either,’ Jill went on, also donning a quiver—but with the arrows available to her right hand—and finding it needed no adjustment to fit her. As Cha had done, she discovered the carrying strap was in two sections connected by a knot which could be separated quickly in an emergency. ‘But I feel sure I could and the sword if need be. It’s … it’s … well, frightening.’
‘Or comforting,’ Beryl pointed out, with a wry smile. ‘Look at it this way, Jill. Whoever, or whatever, saved us clearly believes that, as dear “Tex’’ Gunn used to say, we’re not out of the dark and piney woods yet. They’ve given us weapons and must have conditioned us by some form of post-hypnotic suggestion to be able to use them. So let’s be thankful for whatever kind of aids we’ve been given, no matter whoever they might have come from. I’ve a suspicion these weapons may prove necessary before long.’
Slipping her left arm through the carrying straps of the shield while speaking and grasping the handle of the battle axe in her right hand, the blonde led her companions to the top of the sand dune. Once there, they advanced a few paces before coming to a halt.
Ahead of the trio, as far as the eye could see, spread mile after mile of undulating savannah such as they and white settler friends in Kenya and Ambagasali had jokingly—albeit lovingly—referred to as the M.M.B.A.A.; the Miles And Miles Of Bloody Awful Africa. Although speckled by trees and punctuated with clumps of bushes, termite mounds and the rocky outcrops known in Afrikaans as kopje, it was fairly open country. There was no sign of water, or human life, but the terrain was far from deserted. The likeness to the veldt of Africa was increased by the enormous number and diversity of animals which met their gaze. Great herds of herbivores were grazing upon, or moving across the fertile plains. As was only to be expected, there were also carnivorous predators and meat-eating scavengers—both winged and four legged—so necessary to ensure the balance of nature.
‘We must be back in Kenya again!’ Jill estimated, after drinking in the scene for a moment, sounding relieved despite being unable to imagine how this could be.
‘I’d agree with you, except for a few things,’ Cha replied, having studied the scene with the eyes of a well-trained naturalist. ‘Look at that rhino wallowing over there. It has only one horn and both the black and white rhino in Africa have two.’
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‘Well, yes,’ the redhead admitted, just a trifle dubiously, as she stared at the animal indicated. ‘And it looks a lot more wrinkled than any of them I’ve seen.’
‘It is more wrinkled,’ the brunette confirmed. ‘Which means it’s a Great Indian rhino. And there are no Indian nilgai, blackbuck, or North American pronghorn either running free anywhere in Africa. But I can see herds of all three out there.’
‘And there’s something else,’ Beryl commented, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck beginning to stiffen, as she turned her attention from watching the large specimen of Rhinoceros unicornis lurching out of the patch of mud in which it had been rolling and amble away through a mixed herd of zebra, ostrich, white tailed gnu and reticulated giraffe. ‘We left Malindi and sailed south-east for Madagascar, but heaven only knows where the hurricane pushed us. It could have been back to Africa. In that case, however, the sun should be rising out at sea and not from the inland horizon as it is now.’
‘Good God, yes!’ Cha croaked and Jill stared open mouthed, both realizing what was implied by the statement from “ma’am”. After gazing across the savannah, as if trying to will it to change into something more acceptable to her senses, she continued in a hushed voice, ‘Then where on Earth are we?’
‘That’s just it, Cha, Jill,’ Beryl answered, speaking only a little louder. For all that, there was a timbre in her voice which brought the eyes of her cousin and the maid to her. ‘I know it sounds crazy and as implausible as everything else that has happened to us since the Amazon lost her mast, but I don’t believe we’re anywhere on Earth!’
‘A very astute conclusion, Beryl Snowhill,’ announced a pleasant sounding feminine voice from behind the three women. ‘And just what we have come to expect from you since we’ve been keeping you under observation.’