The upshot of our discussion was that while the sun was still setting, the three of us plus half a dozen hand-picked Pygmy warriors set out to storm the Russians’ hut. We crawled toward it on our bellies, Josef and I cradling rifles in our arms, the Pygmies equipped with their blowguns.
We’d almost reached the hut when the Russians started out. Josef gave a shout and we charged them. Darkness was upon us now, and the action which followed was at least as confused as that which preceded it.
The Russians chose to run rather than to stand and fight. We followed, crashing through the jungle, bumping into things, catching occasional glimpses of them, and then losing them again in the underbrush. Finally they must have reached a chunk of impassable jungle, because we were on them before we realized it and our two groups were fighting hand-to-hand in the blackness.
My first awareness of this came in the form of Krapinadytch falling out of a tree and landing on my back. “Ambush!” I yelled. Then I quickly sank my teeth into his wrist before he could stick the knife he was wielding into my throat. He dropped the knife—still straddling my back—wrapped his hands around my neck, and squeezed as if I were an orange and he were fanatically anti-citrus.
Meanwhile, the lovely Natasha had sprung out of the bushes, picked up the knife, and was now circling us, waiting for me to stand still long enough for her to stab me. “Unethical business procedures!” I snarled at her. “Would you kill a competitor over a few lousy toilets?”
By way of answer she stabbed at me and almost separated my genitalia from their moorings. My pants fell down. They tripped me up, and that probably saved my life. As I fell I slammed Krapinadytch’s head against a low-hanging branch, and he toppled off my back and lay on the ground like a felled Russian tree. It was nice to be able to swallow again. I was able to appreciate it for about one gulp when Natasha fell on top of me with the knife.
I held the hand clutching it away from my gizzard, and with my other hand I twisted her breast as hard as I could. Violence, danger, and all, the defensive maneuver wasn’t without its enjoyable aspects. But my quick glimmer of sex-and-sadism was shattered by an unexpected development. The shaft of a spear slammed down on Natasha’s hand and knocked the knife out of her grasp. I was just looking up to say “Thanks” when the same spear shaft came crashing down on my skull. It was very dark in there inside my head for a long, long time. . . .
I woke up. There were lots of stars. I opened my eyes. The stars vanished. As I looked up, it was pitch black. But as I lowered my eyes and they adjusted, I was slowly able to comprehend my situation by the flickering light of a nearby campfire.
I was tied to a stake at the edge of a clearing. Beside me, tethered to a smaller stake, was Aleka. Across the clearing, on the other side of the campfire, Natasha and Krapinadytch were similarly staked out. Around us were members of the cannibal hunting party, some sleeping, some standing guard, some engaging in activities which I couldn’t make out.
Did I mention that I was naked? No? Well, I was. And so were my fellow prisoners.
Natasha, her body straining against the jungle vines that held it to the stake, looked damned good without clothes. Her statuesque body looked even more statuesque-—the magnificent breasts pointing large and firm at the starless sky, the curve of her hips jutting one way and then the other as she wriggled against her bonds, her long, symmetrical legs tensing to relieve the strain and thrusting the high mound of her womanhood into erotic prominence. Yet even as her torso writhed and performed an occasional bump and grind, there was an unimpeachable dignity to her nakedness.
Krapinadytch was another matter. His muscle tone had gone to flab. Without the camouflage of clothing, his von Stroheim mien had deteriorated into bureaucratic sag. His belly provided a modest shield to conceal his privates.
I opted for Natasha as the more esthetic sight. Staring at her took my mind off a predicament I didn’t yet fully understand. It also abetted a certain tumescence which frequently affects me in crisis situations.
“I see you are affected by a certain tumescence in crisis situations,” Aleka observed in a detached voice suitable to an Oxford lecture platform.
I had to crane my neck to look at her. Our stakes were tied very close together, but parallel, and of course her face was far below mine. I didn’t respond to her observation. What was there to say about it? “Where are the others?” I asked instead, meaning Josef, her father, and the other Pygmies in our party.
“Most of them managed to get away,” she told me. “Jung would have found this fascinating,” she added, peering up at me over her horn-rimmed glasses.
“No doubt. . . . What’s going to happen?” I wondered aloud.
“They are cannibals.” Aleka remained calm. “I imagine they intend to eat us.”
“Guess who’s coming to dinner!” I groaned. “You know, this is really going to set the integration movement back,” I added.
“That is a typical white-power-structure frame of reference,” Aleka lectured me. “Western man drops the Hiroshima bomb, slaughters millions in his gas ovens, bums out whole Vietnamese villages with Dow napalm, and yet still he can express shock at the battle traditions of what he terms savages. That’s hypocrisy!”
“Yep.” I didn’t deny it. “But right now it’s also self-preservation.”
“If that’s what you’re interested in, then I suggest we terminate this academic discussion and turn to a more practical approach of escaping.”
“Such as?”
“Try wiggling around the stake so that you’re facing me,” Aleka suggested. “I’ll do the same.”
I rubbed quite a bit of skin off my bare back and buttocks in the process, but finally I was facing Aleka. She too had managed to maneuver, and was facing me. “Now What?” I inquired.
“By leaning forward, I think I can just reach the vine around your thighs with my teeth. The way it’s tied, if I can chew through it, it should create enough slack in back for you to free yourself. Anyway, it’s worth a try.”
Bracing herself against the stake, Aleka thrust her head forward toward my lower body. “Ouch!” She pulled back. One of her eyes was tearing badly.
“What's the “matter?” I asked.
“You poked me in the eye!” She was indignant. “Can’t you do anything about—?” She nodded toward my offending member.
“It has a mind of its own.” I was embarrassed.
“It has no mind! No conscience! And no sense of self-preservation!” Aleka attempted to bypass the sentinel once again.
It was no use. No matter which way her mouth darted to attack my bonds, it was blocked by my rigid manhood. Frustrated, she finally leaned back and considered the situation.
“All right,” she said finally. “So then we will treat the symptom rather than the neurosis itself. Once it is removed, then perhaps . . .”
Her mouth formed an O and came to grips with the problem. It was one hell of a sensation! Unable to control myself, I bounced until I was sliding up and down on the stake.
“American capitalist degenerate pig!” Krapinadytch shouted indignantly across the compound.
“How can you at a time like this?” Natasha demanded.
But how could I not?
“Yankee imperialism is dragging you down into the mire!” Krapinadytch shouted to Aleka.
“Va-va-va-rooooom!” I damned near pulled the stake over as Aleka accomplished her objective.
Quickly then, while the situation remained limp, she bypassed my manhood and attacked the vines with her teeth. While she was gnawing at them, I became aware of the sound of jungle tom-toms. At first the sound was very distant. Then, by degrees, it seemed to come closer and closer.
Aleka severed the vine. It didn’t free me, but it did create enough slack for me to attack the knot holding the vines together at the base of my spine with my hands. It was while I was painstakingly picking at that knot that one of our captors, a young, tall warrior, approached me.