by: Rick Johnson 
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com
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“How the bleep did I get myself into this mess?” I thought as I sat on the rock waiting for the next attack. My opponent, a gorrilloid, or rather something that looked like a cross between a gorilla and a human, sat at the base staring at me. Bleeding from a half dozen bullet holes, still he growled his determination to exterminate this one foolish human who had trespassed his land.
“Trespass,” I thought. “Here, I am the criminal seeking only to leave with my ill-gotten gains.” When you think about it, weren’t Carnarvon and Carter, they who discovered the tomb of King Tut, little more than glorified grave robbers? And wasn’t Greystoke who raided the Gold Vaults of Opar a simple thief? So why should I think of myself as being anything better than they?
It all started centuries ago I guess. I am Irish. Frankly, like the characters in Burroughs’ biographies, I can claim noble blood in my veins, some of which still leaks from my current wound. Unlike his heros, I am of somewhat less than heroic character and stature. In fact, this expedition is probably the bravest thing I ever did… or stupidest…
My family claims ancestry back to the great High King, Brian Boru. Of course, most of the Irish race make that claim, especially those of us who bear the name O’Brien, “Descended from Brian.” But in my case, it’s true. My grandfather was a noble of Orange Antrim, my grandmother a noble of Green Claire. My mother, eldest child should have inherited and from her to me but excommunicants cannot inherit titles. And as she had also been disowned, there went the family wealth.
Sometimes I wonder if she was excommunicated and disowned because she was insane or being excommunicated and disowned drove her over the edge? If I don’t survive the next hour, I will never know.
Well, my father left us at an early age. Mother said it was because of us but I really think that he simply couldn’t handle living with her and went to wherever he left… .Saudi Arabia? Vietnam? Panama? Or simply the wild west? Dad was the heroic adventurer in the family and I, the dissapointment. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that with an absent father and an insane mother, we were poor. Poor even by Irish standards and that is poor indeed. Poverty that drove me to this place. Seeking gold that no one believed existed. Fighting a beast that shouldn’t exist. Wondering if I will shortly exist.
Back on topic. I’m afraid that my Irish nature, in all its maudlin glory, takes its time to tell a tale for we Irish love a good tale and the more it meanders across the countryside, the better the enjoyment. At least I haven’t given you 500 years of family history, complete with names and deeds.
I was in school at the time. Hiding from the bullies that sought to beat me daily, I hid in the one place where they wouldn’t be caught dead, the library.
It was here, perusing the older books that I found Engineer’s Dreams by Willy Ley. And within that tome was a short paper on a forgotten Nazi engineer who had planned to dam the Congo River after Germany had conquered the world. The original plan was to dam the water’s exit points and simply wait for the rains to turn central Africa into an inland sea. By itself, this meant nothing but the drawing of the result lit the proverbial light bulb! I KNEW where Ophir was! The land of gold! For decades treasure hunters had sought this place. Found by Egypt, described by Haggard and Burroughs and Solomon, sought after for centuries, nay millennia, few had found the place and fewer mentioned it save under the influence of drink.
All I had to do was to read Landstrom’s books on Egyptian shipbuilding, calculate how far the Ships of the Pharaoh’s could travel in the allotted time and then trace their course down the west coast of Africa, up the Zambezi and into the Congo Sea and there it would be!
And here it was! Over yonder and well within sight.
Of course my task wasn’t that easy and it took weeks of hard research even to figure out where to go but I did. Then I gathered my gear, my carbine, my bayonet and anything else I could find, beg or borrow and left for Africa. My mother probably doesn’t even know I am gone.
Even now I don’t know what I wanted more. The gold to recover family fortune and end our poverty or an escape from the endless drudgery and beatings from my fellows. …. No, adventure! That’s the answer. I had read Haggard, Burroughs, Polo and a dozen others all the time imagining that I were there, sharing their adventures, performing great deeds and becoming famous enough to have MY life ghostwritten as was Greystoke, Quartermane and the others. To have my father admire me finally.
Finding Ophir was easy. So easy I wonder if I was fated to do so. I recall my Great Aunt Hepsibar, the infamous Irish Witch of Claire telling me that I was doomed to accomplish great things. “Doomed” she said. Not blessed, not cursed, not fated but DOOMED!
Here I go again, talking as if I were the insane one. Perhaps mental illness is hereditary? Or maybe I am just suffering the famous Irish melancholy. Well, the important thing is to get out and use some of this gold to finance a therapist. No the important thing is to get out alive!
I recall standing on this same rock, seeing the overgrown domes of Ophir shining in the sunlight, their golden façade beckoning me onward. So full of confidence was I then. How long ago? 2 days? TWO BLOODY DAYS is all it took?
Well, I tried to find a way into Ophir but couldn’t. The jungle was too overgrown to find the city walls. According to Greystoke’s biographer, there was a rent in the wall through which one could pass. And IF I could avoid the degenerate inhabitants and IF I could find the gold vault and IF I could get the gold out….
What I did find was the back door. A cliff overlooking the lake and there, a couple dozen feet up I saw a shadow that didn’t move as the sun changed position. A cave! Perhaps even the cave that Greystoke used as an escape from Ophir?
Being an expert climber it was no difficulty to climb the cliff to the opening. Fortunately the cliff had ample handholds so within minutes I was on the ledge looking inward. My flashlight revealed a natural fissure that had been widened with the rubble filling and to an extend, leveling the floor. But well within the tunnel was a landfall. An earthquake had sealed the way.
The question now was “how much of the tunnel was blocked by the quake?” If only a few feet, I could clear the path and raid the vaults and be rich! But if the blockage went on for more, then the entire roof could be weakened and any attempt to dig could cause a cave-in that would bury me.
I shone my torch upwards seeking the roof and saw that the detritus seemed to end a few feet above my head. So, climbing up, I was able to discover that some of the fall had been cleared. Not all of it but enough to see that the fall was less than a dozen feet.
Rather than attempt to clear the entire path, I settled for removing a couple feet at the top to give a crawlway, one that I could duckwalk and a few hours later I was on the other side.
“Empty!” The bloody vault was empty! I spent a fruitless few minutes screaming and throwing a temper tantrum until the echoes of the vault reminded me that I could still be caught. So I calmed down and thought. “Greystoke found a tunnel that led to a well. Then when he went down, he found the jewel room. If I can’t have gold, I’ll settle for diamonds!” So I searched and found the shaft that went up and down then leaned as far into the shaft as I dared. Both down and up showed an opening and as I knew that down led to the jewel vault, I decided to explore up and see what he had missed.
The walls were unfinished and as many of the stones projected outward, I was easily able to climb up to the next tier.
“Bonanza!” another gold vault! The Ophirans had built their vaults in tiers and Graystoke had only emptied the main one. From the looks of this one, he probably hadn’t realized that this one existed. But then, he had never been one to carry an electric torch around either.
Each bar weighed about 40 pounds and was 2 inches high by 18 inches long. The vault had 4 rows of gold bars, each row three feet high and twenty feet long. At 2 bars wide I was looking at 468 bars per row times four rows equaling 1872 bars times 40 pounds each… let’s see now… over a million ounces. No matter what currency I chose, that was a lot of money!
I placed a single bar into my pack for a 40 pound backpack is a back-killer but an 80 pound load is impossible. Then I lowered it to the main vault and swung it inside. Climbing down, I brought the pack to the outside and lowered it to the ground and shouldering my wealth, I sauntered back the way I had come.
Later, while singing a walking song I ran into the gorilloid. THAT was my mistake! Singing. Had I kept quiet he wouldn’t have heard me and I could have slipped out in secrecy. I recall my father had told me that half of all adventurers die on their first adventure so by simply surviving, you are automatically promoted to the top 50% of your profession. I think that doing something stupid like singing has placed me in the lower half.
He was tall, almost seven feet tall but walked erect. He wore a loincloth encrusted with diamonds, golden bands around his arms (arms that were larger than my chest), gold and diamond necklaces and carried the biggest battle-axe I had ever seen outside a museum. Not a light-weight African axe but something that looked like it belonged on an English battlefield. A tool designed to open Irish armour to remove the meat within.
Plus he was covered with hair and had a pointed head that would have elicited comments of “pinhead” from my former tormentors, but only once.
Now that I have time on my rock, I can see that his feet are definitely ape-like though his grip on that axe shows opposition in his thumb. Definitely NOT an ape but neither is he human. Possibly some offshoot of A. Robustus? Bigfoot or Yeti? But at the time I noticed only that he was twice my size, had long sharp teeth and was about to split me with that muckin’ great axe.
Without thinking I raised my carbine and sent a half dozen .30 rounds into his chest. The beast staggered but instead of falling and dieing as would any decently polite man, he rose again, growled and came at me.
I admit that my father probably would be ashamed at what I did then but I wasn’t worried about his approval. I turned and ran! In the movies the victim always runs from the monster or maniac until they look back to see how far ahead they were only to trip over a root or leaf or their own clumsy feet. Then, instead of getting up and running again, they would roll over only to be killed by the monster that took advantage of their stupidity. I wasn’t like that. I figured that be he an inch or a league behind me, he was STILL behind me and that’s what mattered.
I imagine that to a disinterested observer the chase must have been comical. Me, the victim, staggering under the load of a gold filled backpack I was too stubborn to chuck and he, the pursuer, staggering from multiple wounds, both of us moving in slow jerky motion. But all I wanted was to be out of there with my gold so kept on.
Fear is a marvelous incentive and by the time I ran up against the rock upon which I now rest, I was some twenty to thirty feet ahead of him so I calmly raised my weapon, took a deep breathe, let half of it out and proceeded to send round after round of copper-clad lead into my opponent until the bolt locked back to signal an empty magazine.
Finally he fell to his knees and I took that opportunity to climb the rock to safety. Not for me the foolish act of poking the supposedly dead monster only to find myself the victim of it’s last act of destruction. No! I was on the rock and now I could take time to observe the scene.
He slowly got up and approached the rock but by then I had fixed my bayonet to the barrel and as he tried to climb, I poked him in the eye, causing him to scream and back away. I had sent 15 rounds of death into that body and what earned respect was a simple knife. Life is really strange at times and proof that the gods have a really warped sense of humor.
So now we stand. Me with 40 pounds of gold I cannot spend in sight of the richest city in history trapped by a creature from another age. Obviously bullets are of limited effectiveness but I wasn’t about to get close enough to try to stab the beast so I sat there in the hot African sun and thought the problem out. I had plenty of time to think. I had a canteen of water, some food and enough wealth to buy … well, 40 pounds of gold could buy me a house, a car and maybe even convince a cheerleader to date me.
It was fantasizing about that cheerleader that almost was my undoing. One again my concentration wavered and the beast took advantage by throwing his axe at me. He missed… almost. I saw it coming and ducked barely in time, the blade cutting me along my ribcage, striking the pack and bouncing off the gold within.
I had never been cut before and the pain was like a fire-brand across my chest. I almost fell off the rock into his not-so-loving arms but I managed to catch myself. I removed the backpack, finally, and checked my wound. A superficial cut but painful anyway. My first battle scar. Something to show off. IF I lived that long. So I washed my wound and bandaged my ribs with gauze and tape and laughed at the beast, “Ha! Ye Skellum! Ye bloody fool! You almost had me but now I’m still armed and you aren’t! Come closer so I can put a round or two in that pointy head of yours!” I almost unzipped and peed on him but was too embarrassed to go that far.
Regardless of which he screamed and charged and almost made it to the top of the rock. Almost! I jabbed the bayonet into his face and pulled the trigger again and again. He let go of the rock, grabbed the rifle and tried to drag me down but fortunately he had wrapped his hand around the blade and as he slid down, I was able to keep my grip and all he succeeded in doing was to cut his fingers off as he fell backwards.
So, there he lay. So much blood I finally leaned over and was sick. Death! I had never killed before and didn’t like the feeling one bit.
Later when I could breathe again, I wiped and rinsed my mouth and checked on the beast. No movement. He lay as he had fallen, not even his chest moving. No froth from nose or mouth, assuming that the ruin between receding chin and pointed head could still be referred to as a mouth and nose.
So I waited. And waited. Finally as the flies settled I decided that I was bored and it was time to be stupid again and so climbed down and poked at him with the rifle. Nothing. He was deader than road kill.
So I stepped back again and looked him over. Definitely not the gorilla it resembled. Yet not a man either. The head was pointed but that point seemed to be little more than muscle for that tremendously powerful jaw. No claws but fingernails and his feet definitely were ape-like. The skin was black as was the straight fur covering his body.
There had been intelligence in his actions. Intelligence combined with a beast’s ferocity so I counted him as human despite his external appearance. This then, wasn’t the degenerate Oparians described by Greystoke but rather the inhabitant of the Valley of the Palace of Diamonds. He was of a race that Greystoke or Burroughs mistakenly called a gorilla but was probably another offshoot of the human tree. The same tree that produced Bigfoot, Yeti, Hairy Man and the English race.
Then I did what any self-respecting adventurer would have done, I stripped the body. The diamonds set into the leather alone were worth more than the gold in my backpack and either would finance my next trip here.
Strapping his axe to my pack, I staggered off home. Finally rich, finally knowing that the next time those bullies found me, they wouldn’t be harassing the nerdy fool but someone with strength under his belt and wealth in his pocket. Finally with wealth enough to care for my mother and tell a story that would cause even my father to look at me with some measure of respect.
To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
Return to the Home Page.
Return to the Amtor Page.
Return to the Barsoom Page.
Return to the Caspak Page.
Return to the Pal-ul-Don Page.
Return to the Pellucidar Page.
Return to the Va-Nah Page.
Return to the Lost Cities Page.
Return to the To Be Announced Page.
