I mentioned earlier that every now and then we just go exploring our world. Joshua, Thomas and Anthony want to go to the other side of Lake Hope and explore it, to see what kind of wildlife it harbors. They figured it to be about a three day journey around to the other side. From the photos we have of it from space it looks to be oval, measuring about forty by sixty-five kilometers. Then they would stay there at least six or seven days and then another three days coming back.
Most of the women are against them going. They don't want to be without the protection of the men for two weeks, especially if they take the pistol with them. Although I believe it's just a chauvinistic, immature adventure, I'm more or less neutral as long as they leave the gun here -- the three of them are excellent shots with their crossbows.
In fact, all of us who go hunting are excellent shots with the crossbows. We all practice shooting with them at least once or twice a week and everyone except Laci Bianca and Veronica Anne can hit a bull's eye with almost every shot. But on a zero to ten scale I'd give both women an eight point five, maybe nine.
Anyway, the subject of Joshua, Thomas and Anthony going exploring for two weeks gets "tabled" every time they bring it up. I think that's because most of the other men side with the women. If it ever comes down to a vote, I'll probably vote against them going.
But I'm not worried because one exploring adventure by Chantelle Dawn, Regina Aurora, Leonard and Laci gave us all a scare and at the same time helped solve their adventure problem.
None of us wants to be away from camp at night. It's too dangerous because some of these monsters can see better in the dark than we can. So, no matter where we are, we all head back to camp as late afternoon approaches.
Every now and then a party will come in after dark. But those instances are rare and even then they will be in within an hour or so of sunset. Sometimes a hunting and foraging party will take one or two of the five rechargeable flashlights with them if they think they might come in late -- like when Joshua, Thomas and Anthony go out for a night hunt. But those instances are also rare. I also want to point out that the three of them stay close to camp and only go to known areas whenever they do go out on a night hunt.
Anyway, long after sunset, Chantelle and her party still hadn't come in. We knew that they didn't have a flashlight with them and we were all worried. By twenty hundred hours we all figured they were holed up somewhere. None of us wanted to even consider the alternative.
Nothing like this had ever happened. Their absence was felt by all. The mood of everyone was very similar to that when Sam, Valarie and Carli were killed. Doc Yves suggested a movie about the evil inherent in vigilante justice, the 1943 classic The Ox-bow Incident, starring Henry Fonda. But no one really watched it. Half way through it he turned it off and no one complained. We all felt that bad.
All of us were hoping, sitting up watching and jumping up at every little sound coming from the forest around us. As twenty-two hundred approached, no one had even used the love nests. I had to practically order everyone to bed. I reminded them that we would all have to have a good night's sleep in case Chantelle and the others needed our help.
I took little Joseph, Chantelle's boy, Beth took Eve Marie, Laci's little girl and Vickie took Niño Esperanza, Regina's daughter. Then we all turned in for the night.
I didn't have a fire watch that night but I might just as well have had one. I was up it seems every hour. I finally dozed off about zero three hundred. Before falling to sleep I resolved that I would form a search party as soon as the sun came up. I didn't know where I was going to look. All I knew was that they had gone east along the edge of Lake Hope. My friend and lover was out there and I wanted to help her.
I woke up a little after zero eight hundred with a start. I usually get up around six but the sleepless night I put in caused me to miss my own wakeup call. Dawn was still sleeping at my side but little Joseph was gone. Then I remembered Joseph coming to get him, saying something about feeding him.
I hurriedly put on my Marineosaurus shorts. I still sleep in the nude as do most of us. Even with the fans blowing it's still rather warm in the James Cook. Then I headed for the stairs with Dawn sucking on my nipple.
Halfway down the steps I heard her voice. I looked under the wing between the strips of parachute hanging down. Chantelle and her team were sitting down eating a breakfast of hadrosaur eggs and fried duckbilled platypus. She was breast feeding little Joseph. She stopped in mid sentence, looked up at me and waved with a sad, please-forgive-me smile on her face.
I quickly excused myself with the statement that I had forgotten something upstairs. I went to my sleeping area and broke down. I was still crying tears of joy when she came to me. She put her arms around me and Dawn.
"Chantelle, I was so worried about you. I didn't know what to think. I didn't know if you were dead or lost or . . ."
"Hush my love. I know you were worried about me," she ran her fingers through my hair. "I was worried about you worrying about me. But I'm here now."
"I don't know what I'd do if I lost you," I cried into her bare shoulder.
"Hey, aren't you the strong one between the two of us? Isn't it you who usually comforts me?"
I looked up and smiled at her. Chantelle wiped my tear streaked face with a towel. "Come on downstairs with me," she said. "We killed a couple of duckbilled platypuses on the way in this morning. You can eat your breakfast while I tell you all about our adventure."
Before I even sat down Leonard disclosed, "We killed a juvenile pigmy hippopotamus yesterday afternoon and were on our way back to camp when we spotted a cave overlooking the northeast end of Lake Hope. We left the hippo at the bottom of the cliff because it was too heavy to lug up the steep incline to the cave's mouth."
Laci interjected excitedly, "You should see it Toni. The mouth of the cave is about thirty meters above the beach and is about three meters high by seven meters wide. The climb up the right side of the cliff is very difficult."
"But the view is breathless," Chantelle added. "Off to the left we could see a high plateau about twenty kilometers north of the lake with a waterfall spilling over its edge and into the forest below."
Laci exclaimed, "Except for the lake, there was nothing but greenery and blue sky as far as we could see."
"About fifteen kilometers farther down the beach we saw a river that fed into the northern edge of the lake; presumably the river came from the waterfall," Regina said.
Leonard continued, "Nestled into the cliff above us we could see numerous birds' nests. We explored the cave but didn't go too far into it as we didn't have anything we could burn to use as torches. But we resolved to return if only to raid the bird nests for their eggs."
Chantelle said, "When we started to come down from the cliff there was a pack of nine Dromaesaurids waiting at the bottom. These raptors were larger than a Deinonychus but smaller than an Utahraptor. They were adorned with feathers just like other raptors we've seen except the almost completely featherless Utahraptor. Their heads, hands and feet were featherless but the rest of their bodies were covered with feathers."
"The feathers of theses carnivores were white," Laci said. "But some of them had a sprinkling of black feathers on their chests and mingled within their tails."
Anthony guessed that these latter were the males and the others were the females.
According to the group the dinosaurs had already eaten the pigmy hippopotamus and were sniffing the air for more. Chantelle ventured a guess that the carnivores also picked up their scent because they kept coming to the area where she and the others started their climb up the cliff.
There the monsters would sniff around some more and then bark up in their direction. Laci said that these animals didn't really bark. According to her it was more of a cross between the squawk of a parrot and the caw of a crow.
Anyway, Chantelle and her party knew they couldn't come down with the Dromaesaurids waiting for them at the bottom. The approach the exploring party took up the cliff only allowed them to ascend in single file and their descent would also have to be single file. Such a descent would allow the carnivorous theropods to pick them off one at a time as they descended.
They debated among themselves whether or not to try and kill the beasts with their crossbows. But they figured the raptors were all out of their effective firing range. I've mentioned that we are all excellent shots but that is shooting at a dinosaur that is only about fifteen or twenty meters away for most of us. Joshua, Anthony, Thomas and Chantelle, our best shooters, are good for up to about twenty or twenty-five meters.
These dinosaurs were just over thirty meters below them. So, they had to wait the beasts out. But the Dromaesaurids didn't leave until just after sunset when they were chased away by a pack of marsupial wolves, which stayed around for another hour or so just sniffing the remains of the hippopotamus as well as the approach up the cliff.
Our friends said they then debated among themselves whether or not to try and get back to camp; it's a two and a half hour journey away from here. They decided that without a flashlight they knew better than to try and make it in the dark, even walking along the beach.
As I said earlier, there are several large, nocturnal carnivores we hear at night prowling around. So, they decided to spend the night in the cave. They knew we would all be worried about them but there was nothing else they could do. None of them slept much during the night either.
