“Please, doctor! This is a Christian burial,” Mr. Quarrie thundered.
“An ape is one of God’s creatures anyway,” Jacob interjected. “Some people say the last rights over pet dogs.”
“Jacob, please... If it’s an ape, we can dig another grave...” Mr. Quarrie said quickly, to steer the conversation clear. “Doctor, there are women present!”
“Indeed, there would have to be, my most esteemed, friend,” Van Resen continued mischievously, stepping out of the grave with the little bones in hand. “If Ilya Ivanov’s theories are to be tested.”
“Doctor!” Mr. Quarried boomed.
“What theory?” Miss James asked, blushing.
“Ivanov spoke about his thesis before the World Congress of Zoologists in Graz, and these are only rumors, of course,” Van Resen said, brushing at his jacket, cradling a smile. “He proposed experiments to be undertaken at an African research facility where it is his intention to breed a super-man. Stronger. Faster. Hardier. A man-ape hybrid, if you will.”
“Now see here!” Mr. Quarrie barked, shaking his head, and glancing at his wife. “I do not like what you’re implying...”
“Why would Ivanov do this?” wondered Miss James, her cheeks scarlet.
“To make a super worker for industry—a response to mechanization, perhaps,” Van Resen explained, holding the leg bones under the little ape skull. “Or a soldier. Imagine a willing army of ape-men—slaves without human rights to protect.”
“Impossible!” Mrs. Quarrie said, clutching her mouth.
“It’s evil!” Jacob Raines added, holding his shovel like a shield against the very thought.
“Unholy!” Mr. Quarrie blurted, chafing the back of his wife’s wrist. “Damnation, doctor! Need I remind you that we are marooned in a godforsaken jungle? How are we to sleep with such awful notions in our minds?”
“Please, Clive!” his wife whimpered. “Stop him!”
“Doctor...are you saying this infant?” Miss James cried. “That Ivanov...”
“Not this one, no...” Van Resen continued, gesturing with the bones. “However, Ivanov’s experiments hold some possibility for success if the right conditions can be achieved. In accordance with Professor Darwin’s theory, Ivanov believes that apes and humans are close enough in character and physicality...” The scientist pulled off his glasses to clean them against his shirt. “...to interbreed.”
“Oh my goodness!” Mrs. Quarrie screamed, before going white and falling back unconscious in her husband’s arms.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Mr. Quarrie bellowed, and then with Jacob’s help he carried his wife a short distance from the grave where they laid her upon the ground. Virginia and a grinning Lilly knelt by the old woman to massage her wrists.
Jacob returned and picked up the shovel with a strange smile twitching on his black cheeks.
“Curious reaction,” Van Resen breathed, with a shake of his head. “I did not propose that she be part of the experiment.”
The pair filled the grave quickly, and all conversation ceased until Mrs. Quarrie had regained consciousness.
However, every eye watched the surrounding trees.
CHAPTER 11 – A Day of Toil
A busy day followed in which the castaways dragged the rest of their possessions up from the beach for sorting in the shade of the stout trees supporting their strange jungle sanctuary. There they separated items for immediate use and packed non-essentials like wineglasses and the women’s ballroom gowns into crates that were then wrapped in canvas tarps and stored beneath the yurt.
Van Resen was disappointed to find that Manteau’s mutineers had kept his textbooks, and he cursed the ill luck. The texts would have been a valuable resource for the castaways and a rewarding distraction for the scientist. He imagined the books had been overlooked in the Lancet’s baggage hold since it was unlikely such dastards could see any value in the published works.
The discovery fouled the scientist’s mood, and he shared little of the cheer that the others experienced when discovering their own favored possessions among the crates.
Before anything more was moved into the yurt, Virginia led the women in a second and more focused attack upon the filth that yet remained. They swept the hut from fireplace to entrance and back again, and dusted every corner.
The humidity that had greeted the castaways that morning did much to resurrect the various odors haunting the place, while raising the noisome specter of its previous occupant, so there were two concentrated cleanings that culminated in repeated applications of Mrs. Quarrie’s Ambre Antique perfume via gold-tufted atomizer.
The sweet, to some cloying, presence conjured by this was then dispelled when Van Resen propped the door wide to give the place a long-deserved airing out.
With the vines cleared away from the mesh-covered windows, a cross-breeze could be felt, though Mr. Holmes was quick to complain about the insects riding the air currents inside.
The women had petitioned Van Resen to release a small quantity of the drinking water to be used for cleaning but he would not relent until a plentiful new local source was discovered.
He did not bother to suggest they reuse what water he’d already allowed for use in their various daily hygienic rituals for he doubted they could ever attain that level of practicality.
Meanwhile, he and the men had done an inventory of their armament, and came to realize that the mutineers had left them little in the way of weaponry. They had Jacob’s axe, a few kitchen blades including Van Resen’s knife, two shovels and a pick. The previous days’ inspection of the yurt had also produced a short coal shovel, an iron rake and a heavy mallet, hammer and chisels.
Van Resen’s spirits had soared briefly to have found a tinderbox, powder flask, bag of percussion caps and small supply of lead shot caught in the rotten rags that had draped the skeleton of the yurt’s previous tenant.
However, since an anxious search for pistol or musket had failed, the items would be of little use, though the scientist considered building a cannon-like device if a suitable length of metal pipe could be found. Such a thing would be dangerous to use, but the report alone might provide some defense against indigenous animals.
The unpleasant reality left the scientist in a constant state of hypervigilance, worried that their meager weapons
