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Part three of Do you know the Monkey Man by Logan Niadin The monkey man did not stay long. He had a quick conversation with the other man, then slung the two heavy gunny sacks on his shoulders, scooped up the two daisy air rifles and took off at a slow trot. The other man motioned to the boys to get up and pushed them towards the direction that the monkey man had gone. Richard was relieved that they were not expected to run also.
As they came out of the small wood, Richard looked around for the monkey man, but couldn’t see him. They plugged on. Their captor seemed in no particular hurry. After what seemed like a long while walking, the man led them to a small stream, where they had a drink and wet their faces and arms. He let them sit for a while, but was soon up and shooshing them in front of him again, not urgently, but he certainly wanted them to keep moving.
‘Richard, where is he taking us’ said Noel. ‘I don’t know’ said Richard. Then after a pause, his eyes lit up, the very thought of it. ‘Noel, guess what? He said excitedly, Noel, I think we are being kidnapped’.
Noel stopped in his tracks, and burst into tears. ‘I don’t want to be kidnapped’ he cried, ‘I want to go home’. ‘Ay, choup’, said the man ‘chalo, chalo’ he shouted at Noel pushing him forward. Noel took off, running in the opposite direction. The man caught up with him in two quick strides and scuffed him by the neck. Noel screamed in pain as he tried to untangle himself from a thorny bush, which made Richard angry. He flew at the man fists flailing, only to be scuffed into the bush also. Suddenly the thought of being kidnapped did not seem so romantic after all. On and on they trudged, their captor leading the way. He did not seem in any hurry, but the pace was steady. He seemed familiar with the countryside because every now and then he would stop in a spot where there was always water and shade. By now the sun was dropping down the clear blue sky and Richard and Noel’s tummy began to grumble. Still they plodded on behind their captor.
Suddenly, or so it seemed, they came upon a stream. Their captor led them alongside it and as it turned and dropped away, they went down over the rocks and came to a large pool of water. They were led around the pool. Their captor held the two lads by their wrists and then took them into the dimly lit cave. Noel began to cry softly and Richard tried to pull back, but the man dragged them through the darkness.
The Quartz dump was where all the excess gold laden quartz, brought up from the mine from deep underground, was stored. There was round the clock security, provided by a troop of ‘Punjabis’. These guards were really kept on their toes. Attempts to steal gold bearing rocks happened all the time. All the guard could do was blow his whistle and run towards the thieves waving his ‘Lathi’ threateningly. Sometimes the thieves would call his bluff and take him on, with bloody consequences on both sides.
Harinder Singh, the guard who saw Richard and Noel being taken, was in service for twenty years. He was a company man. Three hours after the abduction, he finished his shift and went straight to the office in Edgars Mine. There he told the chief of security, an Anglo Indian, Mr Don Edmunds, what he saw. All hell broke loose. Richard’s Dad and Noel’s Dad were underground at that time with their respective gangs working at two different levels. Mr Edmunds got them up and told them what Harinder Singh had seen. The boys had been quickly identified because everybody knew about the little hunters and their air rifles and how they were inseparable.
Everybody in Edgar’s Block were stunned. The news soon spread right through KGF. Anglo Indian men came from all over town, to offer help in looking for the boys. Harinder Singh took them to the place where he last saw the boys, and they followed a trail to the edge of the woods, and then the tracks disappeared. The boy’s dads decided that they probably needed a professional tracker’s help to look any further for the boys. So nearly six hours after the boys were taken, they went back to the block to have a meeting with all their friends and decide what course of action to pursue the next day.
The cave through which Richard and Noel were being dragged, was getting darker. Still their captor went striding on pulling the two friends, who by now were getting more and more terrified. They seemed to be going uphill, and after what seemed like miles of this they reached the top and started to go downhill. Their captor certainly knew his way, because suddenly he pulled the boys through a narrow opening and it started to get brighter.
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The plot thickens!
Written by domestic engineer on 2008-03-03 08:09:58
Interested to see if this cave is just a short cut to the kidnappers camp site.
Ernest, I'm glad you added the sentence of what a Quartz Dump really is for those of us who were clueless. All I know of is the stone quarry we had in St. Thomas Mount!  |
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