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Melissa Gallant cried out in agony as the
prison matron forced her baton into her
vagina. A foot-and-a-half long
and solid ash, the crude dildo was excruciatingly
painful. It was about that time
that she began to regret having told the beefy prison guard to shove her
head up her bum.
The words had come out of her before she realized
what she was saying. Perhaps
it was because of the after-affects of the drink she had been served in the
Outback pub where she had stopped for
lunch.
She could still feel the effects of that
drink. Her head throbbed like
an out-of-sync motor and she had only a vague memory of what had happened
after she entered the dilapidated pub.
She hadn’t gone in there to drink but to get a bite to
eat. She had found that Aussie
pub food was both cheap and plentiful and since it was the only place for
miles around she had decided it was a good a place as
any. She could remember ordering
something called a Bushman’s Lunch and a Foster’s and then everything
seemed a little vague.
She could remember that about halfway through
her meal and after a few sips of beer she could recall feeling rather woozy
and had attempted to get to her feet.
It seemed to her that someone - or was it several someones? - had
attempted to grab her. She could
definitely remember someone pinching her
breasts.
That memory triggered a
response. Her breasts
did
hurt, and her shirt had definitely been torn
open. The pain in her nipples
served to bring forth another memory; one where she could recall taking her
beer mug and slamming it into the face of some leering drover, but had she
then tossed someone over her shoulder and slammed him onto one of the tables,
collapsing its legs and precipitating a general melee as some men sought
to get at her and others fought to defend
her? It seemed a bit
extreme. And surely she had not
actually thrown a couple of men through the front window of the pub before
whatever was in her drink had overcome her.
All of these thoughts passed through her head
like a speeded up cartoon sequence and helped to explain her present
predicament.
“Ugh!
Another wrenching pain
in her vagina brought her back to the
present.
“You like that, jillaroo?” the matron
taunted. She was a beefy woman
with a face resembling a ripe tomato.
It came to Melissa that she also had a confused memory of kicking
the woman or someone very much like her in the
belly. It might explain why the
fat sow took such perverse pleasure in jamming her baton like a butter churn
into Melissa’s exposed vagina.
“Stop,” she
pleaded. “Why are you doing
this?” The pain was excruciating
and promised to get much worse if the matron insisted on inserting the baton
to its full length.
“Why am I doing this, jillaroo?”
the guard asked. Bloody stupid
question. You come into town,
bust up the pub, and toss the son of the magistrate through the front window
and you wonder why you’re here?
You must be bloody daft to think you could do that and not end up
in jail. And then you assault
one of his majesty’s loyal servants.
You need a lesson in manners and we’re going to give it to
you.”
We?
Melissa tried to remember.
Yes, there had been two guards; the beefy woman and another called
Alice. She couldn’t see
behind her but guessed that
“I don’t remember what I
did. I think someone put something
in my drink and then tried to take advantage of
me. I didn’t mean to hit
you. I was still half out of
it.”
“You were out of it, alright,” the
woman replied, “but this will bring you back.”
“Aaggh!” Melissa screamed as the baton was shoved even
deeper.
“Stop,” she
cried. “You’ll tear
me apart.”
“Oh I doubt that,” another voice
said. “But it is going to
hurt. Your little fanny is going
to feel like it was put through a meat grinder before we’re
through.”
“Stop,” Melissa said
again. “You can’t get
away with this. You don’t
know who you’re dealing with.
My friends will come looking for me and we have connections with the
Australian high command.”
“Oh
sorry, your highness. I hadn’t realized we was entertaining royalty,”
Melissa jerked her body as the baton was thrust
still deeper within her. She
was being brutally impaled and there was nothing she could do about
it. She was in a small cell,
bent at the waist, her hands tied tightly to the supports of a two-level
bunk bed. Her head was pulled
down by a rope about her neck that was lashed to the frame and her legs were
spread by having her ankles tied to the lower legs of the
bed.
Mabe or perhaps
“Please, no more,” Melissa
begged. She was close to breaking
down and screaming uncontrollably and she didn’t want to do that in
front of the two sadists.
“I’m sorry for whatever I
did. I really don’t
remember. I’m sure I was
drugged.”
“You can tell that to the magistrate
when he returns from his circuit in a few weeks,”
“Weeks?” thought
Melissa.
“Weeks?” She
couldn’t stay here weeks.
Larra had disappeared in
She sw3allowed, fighting back
pain. “Please
stop. I need to talk to
someone. I can pay you to take
a message for me.”
“Now it’s bribery,
“I’m not American,” Melissa
protested. “And even if
I was I don’t deserve this
treatment. Please take
a message for me.”
Mabe’s only reply was to give her baton
a vicious twist. This time Melissa
couldn’t control her scream.
For a second the pain
eased. “Gag her,” Mabe
said. “She’ll upset
the other crims.”
“You bastards,
oomph!” Melissa grunted as
“That’s better,” Mabe
commented. With a final vicious
twist she pulled out the baton.
“I think she’s really going to make a fuss over
this.”
“No,
no!” Melissa cried, her
cries muffled by the crude gag. She
tried to shift her body away from the baton as Mabe touched it to the button
of her anus. A few seconds later
she screamed in absolute agony as the brutal instrument was forced into her
anal orifice, and then suddenly the pain was gone.
“Well, what you two Sheilas up
to?”
“Get the hell out of here, Croc; you
got no right to be here.”
“Now Mabe, don’t be like
that. I can’t have you girls
having fun all by yourself. What
did the stork do to deserve this?”
Melissa was both relieved at the arrival of
the male guard and offended at his comment about her
height. But she quickly changed
her mind a few seconds later as the man
continued. “I take it
back. She’s a real
beaut. Got tits like ripe rassies
on a pair of melons.”
He loomed into view, a hulking heap of a man
in a stained and rumpled uniform.
“I detect a violation of the penal code
here,” Croc answered, stroking his unshaven
chin. “You better tell me
what happened or I go to the warden.”
“Bloody drongo,” Mabe
muttered. “All right.
You can have a go at her since
that’s what you really want.”
Croc
grinned. “No
worries. I won’t spoil your
party. This won’t take me
longer than ten minutes.”
“Just the usual then,” grinned
“Go to hell, you bloody dyke,” Croc
responded as he moved into the cell.
Melissa pulled at the ropes that held her,
causing them to bite into her flesh.
The double bunk creaked under the strain, but her bonds
held. Sexual torture was bad
enough, but rape terrified her. The
thought of the fat, sweating guard taking her from behind filled her with
disgust, loathing, and fear.
Her struggles achieved only one
thing. Somehow she loosened the
gag. The rope binding it fell
away and she spat the soiled cloth from her
mouth. As Croc penetrated her,
and closed his ham hands on her quivering breasts, she screamed in pain and
terror.
“What was that?” Katie Redell
asked.
“What was what, miss?” asked the
guard sitting behind the sergeant’s
desk.
“That scream,” the impressive blonde
asked, leaning forward. “And
don’t tell me you didn’t hear it.”
“Hear what, miss?” the sergeant
said, his eyes drawn irresistibly to Katie’s impressive
cleavage.
With a sigh Katie stood
up. “I’m looking for
a friend of mine. A Canadian
girl. I was told that she was
brought here. She’s about
twenty-two, very tall, and quite
attractive.”
“Sorry maam,” the guard
answered. “We’ve had
no one of that description brought in
here.” He grinned sheepishly
as another scream came from the cell block behind
him. “One of the women prisoners
is having a bit of a fit. Drinking
too much.”
“Thank you,” Katie said
icily. “You’ve been
a big help.”
“You’re more than welcome,”
the desk sergeant said, smiling greasily, his eyes returning to Katie’s
prominent prow.
Without another word Katie turned and strode
from the front desk of the police station, ignoring the two drooling officers
who watched her. The sergeant
grinned after her.
“What a set of papayas,” one of
the officers leered. “How
does she manage not to fall over?”
The sergeant opened his mouth to reply and
then shut it, a look of surprise coming over his
face. Then he turned red and
jumped to his feet.
“Hi,” he exclaimed.
“You can’t bring her in here.”
The three officers stared in amazement as
just seconds after she had left, the statuesque blonde marched back into
the police station. She was followed
by three other women, all of them stunningly
attractive. It was not their
beauty, however, but the skin colour of two of them that caused the
sergeant’s face to colour.
Red-headed Amy was no problem, but the sergeant
missed the slender beauty. Instead
his eyes were drawn to coal-black Lisha, and brown-complexioned
Ayashe. “Get those two niggers
out of here,” he raged.
The two “niggers” stood quietly
while Katie crossed the room to the desk.
“The keys to the cells, please,” Katie said
quietly.
“Are you bloody
stupid?” The sergeant stared
in amazement at the magnificent woman who stood in front of
him. His eyes flickered from
her breasts to the two officers in the room and then back to Ayashe and
Lisha.
The tall ebony-skinned Ullabomban maiden stared
calmly at him. Had the sergeant
looked past her colour he would have seen a woman of incredible grace and
beauty, instead he was blinded by her skin
tones. But he also saw something
else. Something that had him
looking toward the two police officers in the
room. Lisha’s dark gaze
was unnerving; like looking into the eyes of a wild animal - that, and the
fact that she was over six feet tall.
“I said, get those two out of here,”
he repeated, getting to his feet.
The two officers moved forward.
Katie smiled slightly, but the slight creasing
of her lips sent a steely message.
She nodded slightly.
The sergeant caught only a flicker of movement
as the fourth member of the group moved.
Amy was across the room and over the top of his desk before he even
knew she was there, and after that it was too late.
The two police officers fared no
better. The
“Handcuff them,” Katie
ordered. She jerked open the
top drawer of the desk and produced a large rings of
keys. “Watch these
idiots,” she said to Lisha and Ayashe and then with Amy accompanying
her she moved toward the cell block.
Melissa hung limply from the ropes that bound
her arms. Croc had hammered into
her with such force that her arms had almost been torn from their
sockets. Her nude body ached
from the brutal mauling it had received, but Croc was almost
done. With a grunt of satisfaction
he spewed his disgustingly thick cream into
her.
“Oh, she was as warm and tight as a
wombat,” Croc exulted.
“You might know about that,” remarked
Mabe, “although I thought you were more partial to
sheep.”
“I’ll do you next, you bloody
dyke. I’ve got
plenty….” He trailed
off in mid-sentence, and Melissa heard Mabe’s voice raised in
anger.
“Who in blazes let you in here?”
Mabe spluttered.
“I let myself in, thank you,” said
a voice Melissa knew well.
“Another bloody Yank,” spat
Mabe. “Well, you’re
welcome to share what we gave your friend.”
“I don’t think so,” the voice
said. The comment was followed
by the sound of several blows, shouted curses, and then cries of
pain.
“You broke me bloody arm,” Croc
screamed.
“No worries, mate,” came a feigned
Aussie accent. “You won’t
feel anything after this.” The
comment was followed by a heavy thunk, like the sound of a chunk of meat
being hit with a hammer and Croc’s moans suddenly
stopped.
The cursing of the two female guards, however,
continued for a few more seconds until a word from Katie made them shut
up. Apparently the threat of
being locked in the men’s section of the jail was enough to get even
Mabe to shut her mouth.
“You all right, Mel?” Amy asked
as she cut Melissa’s bonds and helped her to a sitting position on the
bunk.
“I’ve smelled better, and my tits
and ass hurt like hell,” but other than that I’m fine,” Melissa
groaned.
Amy
grinned. “Come
on. We better leave before the
local citizenry find out we’ve broken into their
jail.” She put her arm around
Melissa and helped her from the bunk.
“Better put these on first,” Katie
suggested, holding up Melissa’s
clothes. “They’ll do
until you can get cleaned up and get a change of
clothing.”
Melissa nodded her
thanks. She didn’t feel
much like talking, not even to thank her
rescuers. She simply wanted out
of the prison and was too beaten and exhausted to even bother with thoughts
of vengeance.
Katie, however, did not want to let what had
happened to Melissa go completely
unpunished. She stayed behind,
catching up with the other women outside the prison a few minutes
later.
“What did you do?” Amy
asked.
“Just gave them something to remember
us by,” Katie answered.
“Now let’s get out of here.”
Mabe grunted in
pain. She twisted her fat body
in a useless attempt to get free.
She was hanging upside down, her head barely a foot from the
floor. The position was incredibly
painful and she could only relieve her weight by pressing down on the floor
with her palms.
Unfortunately, lifting her own weight was something far beyond
Mabe’s strength.
Sweat pulled on the floor beneath both
women. They had been struggling
in vain for over an hour and screaming for just as
long. The problem was, as both
women knew, they were in the solitary
cell. It had stone walls a foot
thick and two heavy wooden doors to screen out all
sound. They would be found, but
it might take hours. To make
matters worse a few feet away Croc hung in a similar
position. The fat guard’s
screams of pain were ear-splitting and with his right arm broken he could
not support the weight of his body.
“Shit, are you sure this thing is supposed
to fly?” Melissa Gallant asked as she eyed the trembling guy wires of
the flying boat.
“Oh yeah, it’s bonzer!” the
pilot announced from just in front of
her. “She’s a real
beaut. No worries,
darling.”
Melissa
grimaced. She wasn’t at
all reassured and she was not in the best of
moods. She had recovered remarkably
from her brutal nightmare in the local jail, but the humiliation of the ordeal
still rankled, and it would take a few more days before her body completely
healed, even with the amazing medicine Katie had given
her.
Her eyes went to the
pilot. She thought of him as
a typical Aussie, big, blonde, heavily tanned, and with an accent so thick
she had to ask him to repeat almost everything he
said. However, she had to admit
that he seemed to be a capable pilot; after all he had managed to get the
ungainly machine they were flying in off the
ground. And he had the most amazing
dimples when he smiled, and that was
often. Beside him sat the statuesque
figure of Katie Reddel, her eyes on the
controls. She probably could
have flown the plane herself, but felt it best to leave the controls to the
man who owned the obsolete flying
monstrosity.
“What did you say this thing was
called?” asked Amy Price from the seat next to
Melissa. She was eyeing the Cyrillic
writing on the control panel somewhat
dubiously.
“First ever, eh?” Melissa
murmured. “That gives me
a lot of confidence. That would
make it how old? About 30
years? I didn’t know something
held together with glue and bailing twine could last that
long.”
“Don’t you worry, Mel,” the
pilot shouted from the pilot’s seat.
“Bertha will get us there.
She’s a great flyer.
I’ve made a lot of improvements in
her.”
“Oh yes, one of the best,” murmured
Amy. “Because all your other
aircraft were appropriated by the government for the war effort and this
is the only one they didn’t take.”
“Probably because they didn’t think
a threshing machine
could fly,” Melissa
added sotto voce, although it was doubtful that anyone could have heard her
over the noise of the engines. It
was very much, she thought, like flying inside a cement
mixer. The vibration was incredible
and the machine stank of oil, aviation fuel, and assorted other unidentified
odours. That, coupled with the
intense vibration and the bumpy ride had her and Amy decidedly on the queasy
side. Katie, perhaps because
she also was a pilot, seemed completely unaffected by the fact that they
were five thousand feet above the ground in the equivalent of a flying farm
implement.
Amy, who had excellent hearing, grinned at
the youngest member of the expedition.
At thirty years of age, South African born Amy was ten years older
than the Canadian girl. She gave
way, however, to thirty-five year old Katie who assumed natural leadership
of the expedition. That did not
leave the
Neither girl ever said
much. Lisha was hampered somewhat
by her command of English, which even after four years she spoke only with
difficulty. Ayashe, was naturally
quiet, a trait that had been reinforced by her upbringing in northern
Both women displayed their own particular
form of beauty. Lisha was
spectacular, standing well over six feet tall, her skin so dark it seemed
to gleam. Her features were classic
African, resembling the ancient Nubians who had dominated the region south
of
Ayashe was strikingly different, standing
six inches shorter and weighing twenty or thirty pounds
less. Her copper-brown skin,
alluring almond eyes, and bow-shaped mouth were incredibly appealing and
revealed strongly her aboriginal Canadian heritage.
A dead shot, only veldt-raised
Amy could match her accuracy with a rifle and she was fully at home in a
forest environment.
Both young women had become one of Larra’s
companions while still in their teens and both had been subjected to the
rigorous training Larra required of all her
companions. For Lisha the tough
regime had not been much of a change.
As an Ullabomba princess she was trained as a warrior and was already
very adept with the traditional weapons of her
people.
For Ayashe, however, practicing the martial
arts of
Thoughts whirled through Katie’s mind
as she sat beside the pilot and studied the
controls. Transportation during
wartime was difficult at best.
Larra’s influence had enabled them to catch a ride on a freighter
to
Contact with Larra and Jia Li had been completely
cut off and any attempts for a bunch of women to make their way to
Whether the ancient machine they were in would
hold up long enough to get them there was open to question, in spite of
Wallace’s confidence in his
aircraft. It was, after all,
the rainy season in the northern part of the country and a time when aircraft
were frequently grounded due to bad
weather. Wallace, however, cheerfully
informed them that he flew in all sorts of weather and had only crashed a
few times.
That was hardly reassuring, but none of the
women felt they had much choice.
Larra had departed on one of her exotic tomb hunting expeditions into
what was one of the wildest regions on
earth. She had taken a radio
with her to keep in touch with the outside world, but the radio broadcasts
had suddenly stopped coincident with the Japanese invasion of the
Larra was in one of the more remote regions
of
It was stupid she
knew. Larra might be anywhere
in
She had been with Jia Li when they had gone
back to the street where she, her husband, and her child had lived in their
row house. There was nothing
left of the homes that had once lined the street, just piles of brick and
other rubble. The Manchu girl
had not said anything and her exquisitely beautiful face had remained impassive,
but Katie had known instinctively to put her arms around
her. The girl had sobbed quietly
for several minutes and then had reasserted her icy self
control.
This was the second great tragedy in Jia
Li’s life, the first being the murder of her family by the
Japanese. She dealt with it the
way she had dealt with the first, by devoting herself to a
cause. In this case it was to
once again become Larra’s companion on her journey into the wilds of
Having cogitated over the plight of Larra
and Jia Li, Katie’s thoughts meandered to the members of her
“crew.” She first thought
of Melissa. The adventure had
hardly begun and already the Canadian girl had been subjected to a brutal
ordeal. “Mel,” as the
twenty-one year old Ontarian liked to be called, had temporarily returned
to
Amy was next in her
thoughts. Now married, the South
African girl, had found herself separated from her husband due to the
war. She had said nothing about
it, but Katie suspected her husband was deeply involved with British Intelligence
due to his connection with the German military prior to the
war. In any case he had disappeared
and her only contact with him had been through heavily censored
letters. Bored, and not used
to such forced inactivity, she had been only too happy to return to a life
of danger.
As for the youngest members of the team, Lisha
and Ayashe were naturals. They
had spent the last several years living and training with Larra when she
was not off on some adventure, and were eagerly looking forward to seeing
her once again, provided they could find their missing
mentor.
As for herself, Katie had been quite busy
using her talents as an aviator to ferry aircraft from
Now they were on their way, provided the only
pilot stupid or gutsy enough to fly them into enemy territory in a vintage
aircraft could get them there. Jock
had taken advantage of a break in the almost incessant rain of the
“Wet.” Now they were
flying as high above the clouds as he could get
them. As a result the air was
both thin and cold, and below them was a sea of cloud as far as the eye could
see.
Katie leaned her head toward Wallace and shouted
over the roar of the engines.
“Do you have any idea where we are?”
The big Aussie shook his
head. “We’re five hours
out of Broome, but I reckon there’s still water beneath
us. I’ll drop down through
the cloud in an hour or so and take a
look. In the meantime, darling,
would you mind priming the fuel tanks.”
“Righto,” Katie
answered. She liked the big,
bluff Australian and was willing to overlook his typically sexist
comments.
She made her way to the centre of the
plane. It had once been used
to hold passengers, but Wallace had torn out the seats so he could use it
for hauling cargo. It was now
full of barrels of fuel. The
Ilya Mourometz had a relatively limited
range. Wallace had extended it
by linking a number of barrels with lengths of pipe and connecting them to
a hand pump. That was not the
only change he had made. Something
of a minor mechanical genius, Wallace had removed the aircraft’s original
engines and replaced them with motors that greatly extended the ungainly
biplane’s range. He had
also made an alteration that Katie would have thought
impossible. Beneath the fuselage
and held in place by aluminum struts were two massive pontoons, effectively
turning the land based vehicle into an amphibious
aircraft.
She was joined by
Amy. Together they worked the
pump, transferring the contents of several of the barrels to the fuels tanks
and then returned to their seats.
“Wanna aver go?” Wallace asked as
Katie moved back beside him. He
gestured to the controls.
Katie smiled her
agreement. To her surprise Wallace
immediately assumed a reclining position and closed his
eyes. “Wake me if anything
happens,” he said.
Fortunately for the next few hours nothing
did happen. By the time it was
time to refill the fuel tanks again Wallace was snoring
loudly. Katie shook him awake
and went back to work the pump once
again. This time both Amy and
Melissa went with her.
“Are you sure this thing is going to
get us there?” Melissa asked.
“I’ve never heard of passengers pumping their own gas
before.”
“So far so good,” smiled Katie,
as she began to move the pump handle up and
down. “How are you
feeling?”
“Like someone drove a bus into me,”
Melissa answered. “But not
as bad as I might have been if you hadn’t shown
up.”
They gabbed a bit more while the fuel was
transferred and then returned to their
seats. Wallace spoke as Katie
buckled herself in. “Going
down to take a look.” He
pushed the yoke forward and Katie experienced the familiar hollow feeling
as the plane began to descend. She
twisted in her seat to signal to the others, especially Lisha and Ayashe,
that everything was alright.
The two younger members of the expedition
were nervous about flying, especially Lisha who had known nothing of flying
machines until the moment she had set eyes on the enormous shape of the German
dirigible, Ludendorff as it swung over her
home. The sight of the enormous
machine had terrified her, but it had not stopped her from preventing her
own people from using Larra as a human sacrifice.
Katie kept her eyes on the altimeter as they
descended through the clouds. If
they were anywhere near their intended destination they might get a rude
surprise. The central region
of
“Crikey, I’m good,” Wallace
exclaimed. They were only a few
hundred feet above the ocean, but just a few miles away loomed the green
of a tropical coastline.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea
what that is,” said Katie.
“I’m not that good,” Wallace
replied with a grin. “But
it might be
Wallace banked the aircraft, turning it parallel
to the coast. Below them the
sea beat against beaches that went on for
miles. “Looks about
right,” Wallace said.
“We’ll stay on this course and see if we can pick up a
significant landmark.”
Katie looked back and noted that all of the
girls had their necks craned to the
windows. Then she turned back
to watching the terrain.
It unfolded slowly below them, mile after
mile of coastline. For the most
part the terrain seemed only sparsely inhabited, marked only here and there
by the occasional cleared area or
village. “What are you looking
for?” she asked at length. To
her it all appeared the same.
“According to the map, there should be
a river delta coming up. If it
is the one I think it is we can follow the river up to where your friend
went missing.”
Katie nodded her
understanding. It seemed as good
a plan as any. Looking for Larra
in the middle of
Katie also looked for something else; signs
of the Japanese invasion force.
“There,” Wallace said, pointing
directly ahead. Katie looked
and spread out before them was the distributary network of a fairly impressive
river.
“We’ll just follow the river now,”
Wallace continued as he banked the plane to the
right.
“It should
take us right where we want to be.”
Two hours later the plane swept in low over
the river and splashed to a perfect landing.
“Bout as far as we can
go,” Wallace said.
“There are no reports of airstrips large enough to handle Bertha,
so if you want to find your friend you’ll have to go
walkabout.”
“Nothing we’re not used to,”
Katie replied.
“No I spose not,” Wallace
grinned. He thought about the
five Sheilas he had on board. It
was actually difficult to think if them like
that. They were unlike most women
he had met, and he had known a few during his thirty-eight years as pilot,
mechanic, drover, and so many other odd jobs that he had forgotten most of
them. They had ranged from nurses
and schoolmistresses to bar maids and even bored
housewives. In race they had
run the gamut from the occasional Aboriginal woman he had encountered while
he was hunting roos, to Chinese whores in
But all of his former acquaintances paled
when compared to the five females who had paid him handsomely to ferry them
into the wilds of the
More than the way they looked and walked,
however, was their attitude. They
were the most self-confident group of females he had ever met, particularly
Katie. Although they were all
equals he noticed that the other women deferred to her when it came to making
important decisions. She was
a natural leader and he found that he was attracted to her by more than just
her physical beauty, which was
considerable. He thought about
the way she had walked into the local jail and shook his
head. It was nothing he might
not have done, but he would have thought twice about
it.
Wallace was used to looking down on
women. At six-foot-four and 220
pounds it was a rare woman in 1940s
“Do you have any idea what this place
is called?” Katie asked, jerking him back to
reality. She inclined her
golden-blonde head toward the small riverside settlement he had steered the
plane next to. There was a rather
rickety dock jutting out from the bank with a couple of dug-out canoes floating
next to it. A few
cautious-looking villagers dressed in sarongs were nervously standing on
the bank.
“Dunno,” Wallace
replied. “It’s not
on any map I’ve got. I just
thought it was about as close as we were going to get to by air to where
your chum disappeared. You say
your missing friend came upstream by
boat. She might very well have
gotten off here.”
“Perhaps,” Katie said
dubiously. She wondered if any
communication was possible with the brown-skinned people on the
riverbank. Her knowledge of the
local language, whatever it might be, was
nil. She did speak German, however,
and might be able to able to communicate with any of the villagers who spoke
Dutch. She knew that Wallace
spoke a variety of pidgin, but whether that would work with these people
was a complete unknown.
The problem was solved a few minutes
later. Wallace had gotten off
the huge biplane and tied it to the dock.
While Katie and the other girls stretched their legs and wondered
about their next step a small white-haired man wearing khaki shorts and a
white sleeveless shirt came down from the village to the
dock. He approached
Wallace. “Nederlander?”
he asked.
“Australian, mate,” the big Aussie
replied.
“Ah,” the little man
answered. He immediately switched
to slightly accented English, introducing himself as a pastor for the
“
“Maid?” thought
Katie. Not a very apt description
of Jia Li. The Manchu girl was
hardly anybody’s servant, but she could see how the pastor with his
colonial attitudes might make that
mistake. He knew little else
about Larra except for the fact that she had set off on foot with several
porters and her companions heading for the ruins of some ancient temple rumoured
to be somewhere to the east of the
village.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to
go on. However, instead of the
dry season Katie and her companions would be going during the wettest part
of the monsoons and with a war on to
boot. She knew that she was going
to have trouble recruiting porters.
It took Katie a week to convince enough of
the villagers to accompany her on her expedition to find
Larra. As she had surmised there
were numerous reasons for their
reluctance. The villagers had
no wish to carry heavy loads over jungle trails during the rainy
season. Katie could hardly blame
them. She had no wish to do it
either, but she knew that everyday she delayed, her chances of finding Larra
diminished.
And then there was the matter of the
Japanese. Even in so remote a
village they had received word of the
invasion. Not knowing what to
expect from the invaders, the villagers preferred to stay put, and they were
especially leery of helping anyone who the Japanese might consider an
enemy.
Finally, there was the place that Katie and
her companions wished to go. The
villagers knew vaguely of the ruins to the east, but they were shrouded in
superstition and most had no wish to go anywhere near
them. This, coupled with the
fact that the porters who had gone with Larra had not returned made it almost
impossible to recruit anyone to accompany
them.
They got less than half the number of porters
Katie thought she needed and only then by paying them in advance more that
four times the going rate for such work.
Wallace was outraged, but Katie
paid. She was much more interested
in getting her expedition underway than bargaining for a better
rate.
On the day of their departure Katie was awakened
by a roar of engines. She moved
to the door of her tent and parting the flap, saw the huge form of the
Ilya
Mourometz moving slowly upstream like some gigantic
dragonfly. Only two of its engines
were running, but it apparently was maneuvering to a straighter stretch of
the river for takeoff. She felt
a slight wrench inside her, not of anguish, she didn’t know Wallace
well enough to feel anything like that, but she was disappointed that the
big Aussie hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye, much less tell her he
was leaving.
“Can’t blame him, I suppose,”
she thought as the gleaming aircraft disappeared around a bend in the
river. After all, the Japanese
could show up almost any day and he had to fly back through a war
zone. Turning back into the tent
she called to the other women.
“It’s dawn. Time
to get moving.”
An hour later, as she supervised the later
loading of the porters, Katie heard a familiar
voice. “Hi, you’re
not leaving without me?”
Wallace strode into view grinning
broadly. A large pack hung was
slung over his shoulders and he carried a rifle in his right
hand.
Katie hid her sense of
relief. “I thought you’d
gone,” she responded.
“You didn’t think you’d get
rid of me that easily did you?”
He answered. “I just
moved Bertha to a lagoon I noticed as we came
in. She’ll be alright there
until we get back. Anyway, how
did you expect you were going to get back once you found your
friend? You need me for
that.”
The entire time he spoke Wallace was looking
into Katie’s eyes. She returned
his gaze stare for stare.
“Well then,” she said.
“I guess you’d better come along
then.” An hour later the
expedition was underway.
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