them with your hands. We were doing that when Antoni started shaking uncontrollably and screaming. He had a fish in both of his hands and he couldn't let go of it! Gregor went to help him, and then suddenly Gregor couldn't let go of Antoni!
I'd seen something like that once when a man touched the wires on a big electrical generator. I knew that this couldn't be the same thing, but I didn't know what else to do. You can stop anything electrical by opening the circuit, so I got out my machete, which we all carried now in lieu of a sword, and chopped the fish in two.
Both men immediately fell into the muddy water. When I got to Antoni, I found that he wasn't breathing and didn't have a heartbeat. I dragged him to shore and administered CPR, while Tomaz went after Gregor.
Gregor's life signs were missing as well, and we worked on both men for almost half an hour. Eventually, Tomaz was successful with Gregor, and he lived. I failed to bring Antoni around.
There wasn't a mark on either of the men, and from Gregor's description of what happened to him, it didn't seem to be a poison. It looked like death by electrocution, but how could a fish electrocute anybody?
We buried Antoni in the sand by the dying river.
That evening, we were sitting around the campfire, depressed by the loss of yet another of our number. Conversation had waned, and I was starting to think about going to sleep, when two tiny men walked up to our fire, as bold as you please! They sat down and shared out between them a fish that we had baked but nobody had wanted to eat. Then they ate it, smiling and nodding at us!
We were stunned. These people looked like something out of a children's fairy tale! They were perfectly formed, well-proportioned, and even quite handsome, but neither of them came as high as my waist! I doubted if either of them could have weighed forty pounds. Yet these were adult men, well-muscled, and with underarm and genital hair.
When they had finished their meal, with gestures we offered to cook some more for them, but they declined. Nor were they interested in any smoked fish. They did accept some water from us, lightly laced as it was with whiskey, and appeared to enjoy it considerably.
I took out a small belt knife and began to whittle on a piece of wood. This got their attention! I gave the knife to one of them, and he was delighted with it. I think he was more amazed with the knife than we were with him. Tomaz gave a similar knife to the second little man, then got out a machete and showed them how to chop up a nearby bush.
We now had them sufficiently interested that I didn't think they would run away on us. It was time to teach them how to speak Pidgin!
The first lessons hadn't gone very far when the bushes around us parted and a dozen or so additional people came out and sat around our campfire. They weren't all little men. Some of them were little women.
These new people were greeted by the two we had already made friends with, and it was obvious to us that they had stayed in the bushes to see what sort of reception we would give their friends.
Since the newcomers were well-armed with spears, bows, and peashooters, they had been prepared to come to the rescue, if we turned out to be the bad guys.
We were trying hard to be the good guys, and we were soon passing out smoked fish and very watered whiskey, and putting more fish on the fire to cook. I went to the canoe and came back with knives enough for everybody in the party, and things soon got very pleasant.
We were going to have to spend some time in this area, at least until the dry spell ended, and we were glad that we could now spend it with friends, albeit small ones.
Chapter Thirty
From the Journal of Josip Sobieski
WRITTEN MARCH 11, 1251, CONCERNING DATE UNKNOWN, 1250
JUST BEFORE we went to sleep, our guests went back into the forest. Even with a fire, and with a sentry awake, they did not feel comfortable out in the open. They couldn't have gone far, though, because they were back again at first light.
They waited respectfully as the three of us recited our morning oath. Later, once they learned Pidgin, they had us translate it for them, and many of them started reciting it with us, as did, eventually, Jane.
They called themselves the Yaminana, and they said that the land for miles around owned them. They really thought that way. They did not own the land. It owned them. Another curiosity was that they did not consider themselves to be 'real.' We, the big people, were the real people. They were just the Yaminana. To their minds, they were something between the animals and the real people, but not members of either group.
The women were mostly gatherers, collecting more than half the food the tribe ate. They took care of the children and did the cooking. As with the other tribes we had seen, these roles were maintained with great strictness. A woman of the Yaminana would no more go hunting than a European would fornicate with his mother!
The men were primarily hunters, waiting silently for hours until a bird, a snake, or a monkey came within the relatively short range of their weapons before shooting. They liked fish, but disliked being on the ground in the open, which fishing generally required. Thus, they were pleased when we brought in all the fish that everybody could carry, before we made the trip to their village.
They were experts with poisons and with traps. The only big predator, aside from the dragons and some of the snakes, was a big spotted cat. It was quite capable of killing a full-sized human, but the Yaminana did not fear it. Rather, it feared them, their poisoned arrows, and their traps. Usually, the big cat avoided the little people.
I know that we could never have survived had we stumbled unsuspectingly onto their village. They had to point out to us each of the deadly tricks that awaited the unwary. The worst, or at least the most common, were pointed sticks steeped in poison, which were stuck in the dirt along the trail. Step on one, and you were laid up for a month, if you were lucky. If not, you were dead.
Their village was largely built up in the trees. Indeed, it might have been them that I had spotted, months ago, just before the fevers hit my platoon. It made sense, given the small size of the people and the fact that the forest around here regularly flooded.
Their community was made up of perhaps four hundred people. Well over half of their population consisted of children, and we saw only a few really old people among them.
They were much lighter-skinned than the natives we had seen earlier, perhaps because of their habit of staying in the dense forest, out of the sun. Their hair was not as black as the others', either, but often shaded into a dark brown. They were tiny, with the adults averaging about a yard tall, yet their proportions were approximately those of normal people, except for the eyes, which were about the same size as my own. Placed in a tiny head, they seemed huge. All told, they were as attractive a people as I have ever seen.
They went about completely naked, avoiding all jewelry, decorations, clothing, and body paint, save for the ubiquitous insect sap.
If they needed something with them, such as their weapons, they carried them in their hands and never slung them over a shoulder, even while climbing trees. They didn't wear belts, baldrics, or anything like a backpack or pouch. We wondered if the reason was that, being small, if danger threatened, they wanted to be able to drop everything, to run, and to hide.
My men and I had long been reduced to wearing loincloths, a piece of old bedsheet going from the back of the belt to the front. The native chief objected to them, on the grounds of sanitation! He felt it was unhealthy to thus hold the body's natural dirt against it. We demurred, but a few days later our loincloths disappeared in the night.
The other tribes that we had met had insisted we indulge in an orgy with them. The attitude seemed to be that if we were not going to be their enemies, we must be their best friends. No middle ground was possible. The little people had the same attitude, only more so.
When we were introduced to their elders, everyone was all smiles and nods since we couldn't speak with them yet. I gave the chief a knife, an axe, and a machete. He gave me his favorite new wife!
Not just to use, but to keep. Forever. This bothered me, for while I was sure that my love, Maude, would forgive my sexual indiscretions — once I told her of the peculiar circumstances— how could I possibly explain
