Free Lizard World by Terry Richard Bazes Page A

-- vile sounds which he hadn’t heard for days -- came floating up from somewhere in the prison far below.
           After several more minutes of crawling, he found himself suddenly tumbling through pitch-blackness, a horrifying freefall broken by the pain of the floor upon his back and the pleasure of seeing a fresco of naked nymphs and rampant satyrs on the ceiling. His next uneasy glance took in a gilded sedan chair festooned with cobwebs, a rusted mantrap and an ornately carved oak privy stool. Someone, as if just risen from the can, had left an open volume on its arm. Nearby, a mildewed harpsichord slouched beneath a heap of bric-a-brac -- including a dusty periwig, a set of moldy dentures, a flintlock pistol, an ivoried snuff-mill and several bottles of brackish liquid containing what appeared to be human fingers. All this was disturbing enough, but even more arresting were the relics of a more recent date: a daguerrotype of a wonderfully buxom maiden in chains and a disintegrating newspaper -- dated August 17th, 1804 -- on which the words “MISSING,” “MANHUNT,” and “EATEN” were still distinctly legible.
           He turned his head back and forth, looking for an exit. But then it struck him suddenly, miserably, like a bully’s punch in the soft flab of his belly -- that the doorway had been all walled up with bricks. A shaft of sunlight fell down from an impossibly small window, holding a swarm of mosquitoes in its beam and splashing a golden disk on the green stone of the floor. “Some day,” he thought, “they will find my bones in here.” Grimacing with pain, struggling to his feet, Smedlow only now for the first time noticed the desk -- with an ink-bottle, a goose’s quill and pile of yellowed papers. It was a manuscript:

    Book II.

    The English Fella’s Tale

    Anno Domini 1687

                                 
                              

    I.

    . . . and presently we did disembark from our galleon in a pleasant cove, and those few of our men whom the pox had wasted, my mariners did bury forthwith, besprinkling their corses with lyme and o’erwhelming them with rocks, lest ravening beasts should disturb their rest and spread the plague still further. No sooner had we thus fulfilled the melancholy offices of Christian Buriall, than we did find ourselves encircled by a fearsome flock of salvages. For they had stol’n upon us with silent tread most wondrous whilst the men did dig and pray and weep for those poor comrades they had lost.
           “I shall be slain,” cries Young Bromley, “and my corse become the food of buzzards!”
           “Tsk! Tsk! Be silent!” says I.
           But finding ourselves thus encircled and outnumbered by these salvages, many of whom did brandish spears and whose bedaubed countenances rendered them yet more odious to look upon, we stood for that moment bemazed. Stood, I say, but that were more trope than truth, for in sooth I myself didst sit within my litter whilst old Mitchell and Young Bromley stood without giving shoulder to my burden.
           “Oh marry! marry! I shall be slain!”
           Thus it was that young Bromley yet again did whimper and quake, and since he thus had disquieted the repose of my couch and since fortune now teetered in uncertain balance, methought it meet to descend from my chair forthwith. Which no sooner had I done, than these salvage brutes made moan and were sore afraid, and did raise their hands to shield their eyes as if o’erwhelm’d by the sudden brightness of my splendour. The largest of these devils, whom I was to learn hereafter was their prince, albeit he had neither orb nor crown but was stark-naked save for a necklace of sharp teeth which he bore about his gullet, now cur-like upon four did crawl towards me and with feeble moans and other such-like shows of brutish consternation, endeavoured to discover what it was I held within