Stephen Reed looked up from the list. “I know two of these names,” he said.
“You do?”
“Grace Eccles and Evangeline May Bancroft. Local girls. They’re my age. I knew them growing up. We went to the same school.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“I remember some concern when they were lost on the moors one night. But it turned out they’d each misled their parents and gone camping together. They were found the next morning, miles from anywhere.”
“Where are they now?”
“Evangeline’s gone. She went away to London. And Grace is not an easy woman for anyone to speak to.”
“Easy or not, this is no time for reticence. What if today’s crime has a precedent?”
“It’s not a matter of reticence,” Stephen Reed said. “Believe me. If you were to meet Grace, you’d understand. May I hold on to this?”
At that moment, there was a knock at the door. It was Dolly, to say that Sebastian’s supper was waiting for him in the dining room.
“Keep it,” Sebastian said. “And do with it what you can.”
TEN
Extract from
By Sir Owain Lancaster, FRS
It was the morning after the night attack on our camp. The dead and the injured lay where they had fallen. Everyone came down out of the trees and out of their hiding places and began to share their stories of what they had seen. One of the
I had witnessed no such thing myself. I am ashamed to say that the attack had been too sudden, and too overwhelming, for any response other than hasty self-preservation. One moment we had been sitting by our separate campfires, doing our best to raise each other’s spirits for the further trials ahead; the next, it was as if a combined landslide, whirlwind, and stampede descended upon us, all at once.
You might say that, after our earlier experience upon the river, we should have been more prepared for something like it on dry land. In our defense, I should say that even the most fertile and apprehensive imagination could never have anticipated what came to befall us. First had come the sound, like the thunder of an approaching wave, to which had quickly been added the crashing of falling trees. We had barely time to rise to our feet and then the herd was upon us, charging through the camp, scattering bodies and trampling our fires.
What little I saw, I saw by firelight. I could make no estimate of their number. Each of those beasts was a giant, of a species hitherto unknown to science. They seemed to move as easily on two legs as on all fours, their long tails providing balance and their forelimbs as well adapted for gripping as running. At the time their attack appeared to have no purpose other than to terrify and destroy.
But now, as we counted our number that morning and found no less than three of our fellows and one of the
“We have already lost many of our number and most of our supplies in that terrible incident upon the river. Last night, we suffered losses again. But for those of us who have survived, let us remember that a certain providence has brought us this far. We live because it is clearly God’s purpose that we should, and to give up now would be to go against his plan.”
I saw hope in their faces as I spoke. Truth to tell, we had all been through a dreadful ordeal. To see one’s comrades torn by beasts is a terrible thing. The river serpents that had upset our boats and taken our companions had left many in a state of shock, and I knew that from now on a few among us would need to have courage for the many. And with that in mind I set out the following plan.
Those injured in the night’s attack would be moved to a new camp on higher ground. Dr Swould supervise their care and set about the gathering of certain plants and herbs that would alleviate their injuries. I, meanwhile, would take my buffalo gun and follow the clear trail left by the night’s attackers, in the hope that I might find and rescue some, or even all, of our fellows.
I credited those rampaging creatures with some dim intelligence, in that they had surely taken their victims alive for some purpose. What that purpose might be was too horrible to contemplate, but it gave me all the more reason to proceed without delay. I loaded the buffalo gun and gathered my remaining ammunition, after which I devised a way to hang it around my shoulders in a makeshift bandolier.
My enemies would be formidable, but thus armed I was confident that we might be evenly matched. My greatest danger was that they might come at me all at once, for the buffalo gun carried but a single round and required a reloading after every discharge. I was, however, banking on the prospect that the devastating effect of a large-bore hit upon one of the creatures would be enough to cause its fellows to turn and flee.
The others pleaded with me and expressed fear for my life, but I grew stern with them as if they were so many children, and reminded them of my authority as their leader.
“Enough,” I said. “Bury our dead and fortify our camp against further attack, and I will return by nightfall, either with our missing comrades or with news of their ends.”
With that they were resigned. Each man insisted on shaking my hand and wishing me well, and I saw tears in the eyes of more than one. As the effort of cutting wood to build a stronger stockade began, I took a half-day’s ration of food from our meager supplies and set off to follow the trail left by the attacking herd.
Tracking them was no difficult job. No Roman army ever blazed a road so straight, nor so clearly defined, as those great primitive monsters in their advance through the jungle.
As I made progress, and as the sounds of the camp fell behind me, I began to realize that from tragedy there might yet arise some benefit to those who had survived. For this early part of the trail at least, it seemed that the herd had followed the line of the river and done much to break the way for us. Normally we had to move at a slow pace behind the Indians and
Within the hour, I had covered the kind of distance that otherwise would have taken us a day, and though I lost sight of the river for long stretches at a time, I was never beyond the sound of it. This was most important. Though we had lost our boats, the river was our God-given guide out of the wilderness. Without it we might circle forever, with the trees blocking out the sun and a steady madness descending for want of us having any purpose or direction.
Shortly after that, I saw my first signs that the creatures were near. I shall not go into detail. Suffice it to say that waste, flies, and steam played a part in my deductions. I moved onward with great caution, hoping not to betray my presence.
I had reasoned that, since the creatures had attacked us at night, then surely they must sleep by day. The night-adapted eye fares less well in the noonday sun, and the energies expended in night hunting must be recouped at some point.
My hope was that if our fellows had been taken as prey for future consumption, then there had been some purpose in taking them alive, and that keeping them alive was a part of the creatures’ plan. If the creatures slept and I approached with sufficient stealth, I might yet be able to free my party and lead them back to our new camp, where a second attack would find us more prepared.
It was with these thoughts in mind that I crept forward and met a sight for which nothing could have prepared me. Had I realized how close I was, and how the creatures had moved to conceal themselves from sight, I
