Gold of the Gods (11 page)

In front of them lay a large, splintered
branch. Ringo had come to a halt above it,
and was flapping his wings and screeching
wildly. 'You'd think the stupid parrot had
never seen a tree before,' said Marco. 'I
think it must have been blown down during
the storm.'

Beck strode forward and was about to
pull the branch out of their path when he
felt Christina's hand on his shoulder. He
stopped, sensing instantly that something
was badly wrong. Silence fell as he scanned
the branch in front of him.

Suddenly his body froze. Beads of sweat
rolled down his brow and he could feel the
sting of salt in his eyes.

He was looking into the cold, unblinking
eyes of a viper.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The twins didn't have time to move a
muscle. Like a Samurai's sword, the blade of
the machete sliced through the air and, with
a heavy thud, the sharpened steel struck
home. Beck crouched over his prey, his
body taut as an archer's bow. Then he
relaxed and let out a long, low sigh.
'Shoousshh,' he said quietly. 'That was far
too close for comfort. Thank you, Señor
Ringo.' He blew a kiss skywards.

Beck dragged himself to his feet and
turned to face the twins. The body of a
giant snake hung twitching in front of
them, impaled on the point of the machete.
Beck ran his finger down the pinky-brown
flesh. 'How about that for camouflage?' He
raised his eyebrows in approval. 'Bushmaster,'
he said. 'You can tell from the
zigzag shapes on its back. They're like black
diamonds strapped round its body.'

He paused and gazed down at the dead
creature in admiration. 'Biggest viper
species in the world. And one of the most
deadly too. Check out the length of those
fangs. And its head is a triangle. Usually a
sure sign in snake land that it's one deadly
dude.'

He pulled the machete out of the bushmaster,
before bringing it down hard again
to sever the head. The body fell to the
ground and he picked it up on the point of
the machete. Meanwhile the head still lay
on the branch in a pool of oozing, dark red
blood. Its mouth gaped open in a ghastly
smile and its eyes were fixed in a glassy stare.
Its upper lip was still twitching and had
curled back, revealing two huge fangs like
the curved incisors of a sabre-toothed tiger.
A thick trail of poisonous goo dripped onto
the smooth bark beneath.

'Haemotoxin,' said Beck. 'If that stuff
gets into your bloodstream, it will turn your
blood into black pudding, along with the
rest of you. All the poison's in the sacs under
its head. The nerves go on working even
after the head's been chopped off. It could
probably still bite even now.'

He let out a sudden hiss and made a
lunge at Christina, who yelped and jumped
out of the way. 'I'll get you for that,
inglés
,'
she said, a hint of steel flashing in her dark
eyes.

Beck laughed and held the blade of the
machete proudly above his head. The body
of the snake hung limp in front of them like
an eel on a fishmonger's hook.

'Pure protein,' he said. 'Just what we all
need. We'll cook it tonight. If it weren't so
deadly, we could have just taken it prisoner
and killed it later. Keeps 'em fresher if
they're still alive. Still, we've got meat and
veg for supper now and it's not even lunch
time.'

Beck edged towards Christina. 'And in
the meantime it should make rather a fetching
scarf.'

But this time Christina was ready for
him. Quick as a flash, she grabbed the tail of
the snake and wrapped it around Beck's
neck. 'Suits you,
inglés
. Very smart.' She
chuckled triumphantly.

Now that the tension had eased, they began
to move more quickly. Taking it in turns to
hack a path through the undergrowth with
the machete, they walked in single file as
they climbed ever higher. Warblers and
hummingbirds flitted through the trees,
bright splashes of colour against the endless
canvas of jungle green. After a while
the undergrowth became less dense and the
trees much larger. Huge buttress roots
fanned out from the base of their trunks like
the webbed claws of a dinosaur.

'Primary forest at last,' said Beck, leaning
on his stick and wiping his cheek with the
back of his hand. 'This stuff will be easier to
walk through. The trees have never been cut
down so there's been very little light in here
for centuries. No light and the undergrowth
is better behaved. Even so, we'll be lucky to
cover more than three kilometres in a day as
the crow flies.'

'Pity we're not crows,' said Christina
wryly.

'Or parrots,' said Marco, watching Ringo
enviously as he glided serenely through the
air above them.

They had reached a ridge high up on the
edge of the plateau now and the trees had
given way to a dense thicket of bamboo.
Some poles were as thick as an elephant's
trunk, the smooth silky yellow flecked with
splashes of bright green. High above, their
tops curled inwards like the columns of a
gothic cathedral and shafts of light pierced
the gloom like sunlight through stained-glass
windows.

The long day was beginning to take its
toll and there was an urgency in Beck's voice
now. 'At last,' he said. 'Just what we needed.
Bamboo's the best material in the jungle for
building a shelter. But we must work
quickly. It'll be dark in a couple of
hours and by then it will be too late. And
if it rains tonight, we're going to get
soaked.'

Without warning, Beck plunged the
point of the machete into a bamboo stalk
next to his head. As the twins watched in
amazement, water gushed out and they
drank eagerly. 'No need to go thirsty in the
jungle,' said Beck. 'If there's no rain falling
out of the sky, you can always be sure
nature's stored it somewhere else.

'This looks like a good place for a camp,'
said Christina when their thirst had at last
been satisfied.

'It may look great,' said Beck, turning in
a slow circle and scanning the surrounding
jungle. 'But looks can deceive.' He picked
up his stick and started clearing the dead
matter from the jungle floor until he had
exposed the earth beneath. 'Look there!'

Beneath a seething mass of black they
could just make out the soft green flesh of
something that looked like a cross between
a cockroach and a grasshopper. Every so
often a limb would break free and twitch
feebly before being swamped again by a sea
of miniature black legs. Columns of
reinforcements stretched out across the
jungle floor in every direction. The twins
flinched in disgust.

'Bullet ants,' said Beck. 'Get stung by one
of those and you'll know all about it. It's like
being burned with a red-hot poker. And if
you've got the whole nest crawling over you,
you're in big trouble. As that poor bug has
just discovered. Ants don't do detours. If
there's anything in the way, they just march
straight over it. And if they're hungry, they'll
just munch through it. And that includes
us.'

Beck led the way out of the bamboo
grove onto the edge of the ridge. He looked
around and chose an area of ground that
shelved away slightly. 'This is better,' he said
after clearing away the undergrowth with
his stick.

'There's only one rule when you build a
shelter in the jungle. And it's exactly what
Uncle Al says about buying a house.' Beck
put on a posh English accent. '
Location,
young man. Location, location, location
.'

The twins laughed as they remembered
the eccentric Englishman in the panama
hat. 'Wonder what he's doing now,' said
Marco thoughtfully.

Beck pretended he hadn't heard. He
wanted to keep their spirits up, not allow
them to dwell on their worries. 'We're high
up here,' he continued, 'so if it rains during
the night, the water won't run down the hill
and swamp our camp. These jungles aren't
called
rain
forests for nothing.' He gazed up
into the tangle of leaves and branches above.
'And there's nothing up there to fall out of
the tree and kill us. Most people who die
in the jungle are killed by things falling on
their heads. Rotten branches and coconuts are
the worst. Not the most dignified way to go.'

He looked around, closely studying the
jungle floor. 'And there are no animal tracks
around either. Most of the big beasties hunt
at night and follow the same paths.
Especially if they lead to water. And if your
bed happens to be in the way, they're not
going to worry too much about trying to
dodge round you.'

'Looks perfect, skip,' said Marco. 'What
next?'

'A-frame bed,' said Beck. 'The principle
is to sleep off the ground. That's where all
the damp ends up and the creepy crawlies
live. Just lash pieces of bamboo together in
an A shape for the bed ends. Then you get
two more poles and strap them to the
frames halfway down. Looks a bit like a
stretcher. Bingo! One bed.'

'But what do we lie on?' asked Christina.

'We can weave some vines and palm
leaves across the stretcher bit to make a
platform,' said Beck. 'Same principle for the
roof of the shelter. It's like a screen woven
across a frame of bamboos. If you want to
get really fancy, you can cut some bamboos
in half for guttering so that it channels the
water away.'

While Beck cut down the bamboo,
Marco went in search of tinder and
wood for the fire and Christina cleared the
ground for the camp with her stick. When
Beck returned, he was brandishing some
long strands of bark he had cut from a
nearby tree. 'Stringy bark,' he explained.
'Works perfectly for cord to lash everything
together.'

There was a shrill cry from above and
they saw that Ringo was still with them,
watching their activities with interest.

By the time the camp was finished, the
daylight was almost gone. The flames from
the fire were throwing eerie shadows
into the surrounding forest. Marco was
sitting on his pole bed, smiling proudly.
Suddenly he let out a muffled curse and
started to scratch hard at the back of his leg
through his trousers.

'Don't scratch, Marco. Not like that.
You'll break the skin and the wound will be
full of pus by morning. Keep still now.'
Beck had grabbed a branch from the fire
and was blowing on the end. Kneeling next
to Marco, he rolled up the boy's trouser
bottoms and held the glowing tip as close to
Marco's leg as he could without burning
him. Marco flinched as, one by one, five
ticks dropped off his skin.

'Jungle basics,' said Beck. 'Look after
your skin. It's not usually the big beasties
that get you, it's the creepy crawlies.' He
threw the burning branch back on the fire.
'OK, time for our feast.'

As the twins lay exhausted on their beds,
Beck picked up the carcass of the bushmaster;
earlier he had impaled it on a
sharpened stick and stored it well clear of
the jungle floor.

Grabbing the end of the severed neck, he
began to peel the skin away from its body as
casually as if he were taking off a jumper,
and then slit the stomach of the snake. With
a slurping noise, the guts slid out onto the
ground. Christina looked away, trying to
stop herself gagging as Beck picked them up
and threw them into the flames. 'Don't
want to attract uninvited guests,' he said,
staring out into the surrounding darkness.

Silence fell as the meat gradually roasted
over the flames. Beck had jammed the
snake's tail into a splice before wrapping the
rest of the body around the stick like a
ribbon around a maypole. After a while the
flames leaped higher and the fire began to
sizzle and spit as the fat from the snake
slowly oozed onto the embers below.

Lazily stretching out an arm from his
sleeping platform, Beck turned the stick so
that the meat cooked evenly. Finally he
judged it was ready and cut it into steaks.
They devoured it ravenously, washing it
down with the water Beck had collected
earlier in some makeshift mugs cut from
sections of bamboo.

The meat and the warmth from the fire
soon began to work their magic. Unable to
keep their eyes open any longer, the twins
fell into a deep sleep. For a while Beck
fought the heaviness of his eyes and, taking
Gonzalo's map out of the case strapped
around his body, studied it once more in the
light of the flames.

As the fire slowly died down and the darkness
closed in around them, the sounds of the
jungle became louder, though Ringo was
quiet now. Beck's ears felt like they were on
stalks as he stared into the inky blackness, trying
in vain to recognize the strange screams
and screeches that pierced the night air.

Hoooo, hoooo
, shouted something.

Urrrk, urrrrk, urrrrk. Tuk, tuk, tuk.
Aaarkkk, aaarkk
, came the reply.

But as his eyes finally began to close, he
heard another sound; he felt as if an ice-cold
hand were reaching into the pit of his
stomach. The noise was like a cross between
the bark of a dog and the frenzied screech of
a fighting cat. Three times it pierced the
night air. Then there was silence. Even
the hypnotic pulse of the cicadas had faded
to almost nothing.

Beck knew at once what it must be.

The jaguar, king of the jungle cats, was
stalking its prey.