The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (34 page)

             
The Brigadier paused here and looked off across the big room. He was plainly lost in memories and we all sat waiting. Then he took a deep breath and went on.

             
"Her hair, combed back straight, was straight itself and went to just above her waist
.
It was a reddish gold and shimmered in the sun. With her size and blazing good looks and coloring, she looked like the living figurehead of some ancient, royal ship, absolutely staggering!

             
"That, gentlemen, was my first sight of
Fayuna
, the glorious, lost queen of
Conhung-At'lantz
, and mind the last half of that place name.

             
"But though George Hooper and I had been simply gawping in total amazement, the real hunter among us had been thinking and moving. Lucas' head popped up right under my nose, silently as an eel's. 'Watch all behind her,' he purred. 'I think she take bath. In the
watah
, I get her quiet like and bring her here.'

             
"I could only nod and he vanished again under overhanging leaves while George and I took up our watch, though I don't think we'd have noticed anything short of a mad, pink elephant
.
Our
male eyes were set hard on one thing only.

             
"Surely enough, the glorious young avatar of womanhood, and I could see by many indications, including her movements, that she was young, had come for a bathe. She only took one thing off. That gold belt and the jewel-studded gold bra were hardly clothing, but she unhooked the breast plates, laid them on the bank and stepped into the shallows, waded deeper and began to swim in our direction as it got deeper. She wasn't much of a swimmer and it was nothing but what we'd call a 'dog paddle
'
, but it was slow and graceful even so.

             
"As she swam, her deep husky voice sounded for the first time in a sort of gentle song. I couldn't get a word but
they were words nevertheless. It was kind of a chant and I could even catch sounds that seemed to rhyme, though not in any tongue that sounded even vaguely familiar and I've heard quite a few.

             
"Closer and closer she came and now she was on the edge of a tall patch of some reed which threw a shadow over the water below them. I was holding my breath for I'd seen one of those reeds move just a second earlier.

             
"Then, Lucas struck! He'd got in front of the reeds and slid under water until he was behind that great, red-gold shape and then he rose like a dark copper eel, suddenly and smoothly at her back. His long, strong arms locked about her upper torso, sliding under her arms and up behind her neck, a lovely neck but large, suiting the rest of her more
-
than-normal female proportions. They were so close now that as we waited breathless, her young, pointed breasts thrust at us and I saw the pink of the nipples rising out of that sleek, golden pelt which garbed her body. In a split second Lucas had the woman in the hold Americans call 'Full Nelson,' his hands locked at the back of her neck, holding her pinned fast to his own body, unable to even move.

             
As her wide and full-lipped mouth opened, I saw the white teeth, and they looked sharp, the canines almost those of a carnivore. Her great eyes, as strange as a cat's but smokier looking, were wide in shock and surprise. I knew a yell was coming and I determined to try and prevent it
.
I rose from the cover of leaves and leapt forward into the water. It was not deep and the two in front of me were waist deep only. At the sight of me, her huge, lovely eyes widened even further and almost rolled upward in shock. I had one hand raised, palm out and up, and I hissed 'Quiet' at the frozen face before me.

             
"Lucas's voice came from behind her shoulders. 'Don' worry,
Sah
, I got her good! She don't move unless I let go.' The woman's, or rather girl's for that was what she was, despite her size, a great girl mouth closed in despair. I
had my finger at my own closed lips now and it took no knowledge of English to know that I wanted silence from her. In another instant I had one of her upper arms in one of mine and Lucas and I began to push and pull her into the shallows and up on our bank. George came down to help and we soon had her in the ferns where we had been hidden, concealed from sight by greenery from all but a careful search.

             
"She stared wildly at first from George to myself and back. Lucas had never slackened his firm grip but had allowed her head to come erect so that it was not bent over, and since he was still crouched behind her, she could see nothing of him.

             
"I decided to try my crude Spanish on her. I spoke no Indian tongues and the local Mayas all spoke a crude Spanish, when they felt like it, that is. 'Amigos,' I said, trying to keep my eyes fixed on hers. It wasn't easy. That great, female body, lean-hipped and long-legged and all covered with that extraordinary pelt, like a close-furred golden cat's but even shorter, the amazing hair, the oval face and the full lips, now slightly parted as she panted softly. But the fear and horror were gone from the eyes now and they were sharp eyes, studying us, though still surprised. And, when I'd said 'Friends' in Spanish, they flickered and she stopped twisting her neck and
focussed
on me alone. At this point, so odd is the human mind, I registered in my mind that below the massive golden belt, the lady wore a smooth leather loin cloth, which was tucked under and up again over her rounded rump. For some reason, this made me feel better, as if things were more proper this way!

             
"That thought only took a split second. Then, my brain wiped all else away. For she was talking to me and I could at least partially make sense out of what she was saying. There, if you like, men, was a real thrill and one I had never expected.

             
"She kept those extraordinary eyes glued on mine, not
looking at all at either Lucas or George, though both were helping keep her pinned. Her voice, which I'd already heard when she was
carolling
to herself, was deep and throaty. She spoke slowly, as if trying to deal with both unfamiliar speech and concepts. It was an odd tangle, being largely crude Spanish but with many pauses. Mixed in were clicks and gutturals which I guessed were Mayan and Lucas told me I was right later on. Rarely, she'd be at a complete loss and then would come some word utterly alien even to Lucas. This, we soon learnt, was in her own tongue.

             
"What I got was roughly this: 'Who are you? Are you from the Land of my people? Are you another of those who writes scrolls? Your eyes, they are of our ancient, lost color! Only once have I ever seen a man like you and those who advise, they killed him. I tried to stop them (it) but it was not good. The poor
Pursee
!'

             
"Even with all the garbled language, that last word got to me.
Pursee
! That was the first name, even mispronounced, of our long-lost agent, the chap I've called Jones, the man who wrote the report that was so strangely delivered to the
Hoopers
' boat at night off the mangrove coast Percy, eh?

             
"I spoke finally, when she fell silent at last and simply stared up at me. 'What do you know of Percy?' I said in my very crude Spanish. I had no Mayan and her own language was a total blank. 'Who killed Percy? He was my friend. I came to find him. Was it your people?'

             
"Those great, smoky-brown eyes widened even more, and that gorgeous mouth opened again. 'He spoke like you do. He did not speak like those young girls the Plan has us take from down below. He spoke like that too, the other man who came and went away when I was little, the one who made our High Women so sick and angry, the one who wrote all the scrolls.'

             
"Here she looked thoughtful as one does who tries to remember some forgotten name. She no longer seemed upset or even afraid of us. Then the eyes cleared. 'Labrador, that was his name,
my aunt told me. Three names this strange man who escaped us had, Felipe Jose Labrador!'

             
"So, someone else had come and seen this weird bunch at close range and even got away with it, which seemed more than our lost agent had done. No doubt some peon or mestizo, some wandering laborer, maybe even a bandit 'Philip Joseph Farmer indeed! As common as Smith in New York and probably an alias, as
Pancho
Villa had been. But what was that about this unknown's writing scrolls? I asked the lady as best I could, and made sure that Lucas was also listening to it, so that any Mayan that crept in might have a chance of being understood.

             
"What came out was a real
mélange
of everything: Spanish, Mayan and her own gabble a real linguistic stew. I finally put my hand gently over her open mouth to shut her up and nodded to Lucas to tell me what, if anything, he'd got out of this. It was more certainly than I had, but puzzled us both.

             
" 'She talk very fast, Sir, and there is much words I don' know at all. But she say this man she call Labrador, he get everyone all excited so they
wan
' kill him, but he was clever and get out anyway. He tell them the country they come from it sink in the ocean, it don' exist any longer. Then he tell them a man name of
Ee
Are Bee, he know all about it
.
And he say, this Labrador fellah, he say maybe there is other city and this other city over in Africa! Yes, a city from this country that sink in the ocean long ago, he say, and this other city it call "
Opar
." I don' understand what this woman
talkin
' about, except it
mus
' be very old.'

             
"Now that word '
Opar
' stirred some lost memory in my own mind. I took my hand away and our captive raced off into more of her excited speech. I listened to it for a minute and then put my palm back and again looked at Lucas. He seemed more confused than before, but he tried.

             
" 'Now she say the people here worship the sun, jus'
like them
ol
'
Indios
did,
them
Mayans
befoh
the priest come. And this place in Africa they do that too.' He paused a second, then scratched his head. 'This man Labrador, he
mus
' be big liar but they think he smart
.
He tell them the name of their country that sink in the ocean and they say that is right name, the old name, almost the same as the way they say
thot
name. An' the name of this country they say sink in the ocean is some funny one. They call the place "
Azdante
" or "
Adantaz
," something like that anyways. I think this Felipe Jose Labrador, whoever he was, was some big liar and a bigger storyteller than anyone. But he fool these funny folks good wit' all his talk about sunk countries and cities in Africa call "
Opars
" or
somethin
'. Anyway, Captain, that's what I get out of her talk now and I think I get most of it' Lucas fell silent and three pair of eyes studied my face. I looked down at the giant, chocolate and milk orbs of our captive and made it four pairs studying.

             
"Frankly, I was just a bit numb, you know. This weird trip, that peculiar message that started it all, the ape-man monster we'd killed and finally this extraordinary female revelation. Only one continent of civilized humans was ever supposed to have sunk in the sea, as any child knows. Atlantis! The greatest legend of all time, left to future ages by Plato, and no one has ever known whether that Greek genius was writing of actual history or simply inventing mythical Utopias for his own personal philosophy.

             
"So there we stayed, for what seemed an hour but was only a minute really, four people full
of varying degrees of puzzlement, while the tropic sun beat down and small insects bit us and buzzed off.

             
"Finally, I woke myself out of my dreams and returned to reality or what passed for it in this place. I can tell you, it wasn't easy with all of what I'd just heard and what I'd guessed, all churning through my mind."