Death in the Silent Places

[Hanrahan 2983]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKivovIBx4

 

 

DEATH IN THE SILENT PLACES

 

Thick was the heated air of the Jungle wood, teeming with a thousand nattering insects and creeping things, full of life - but completely still to view. The Elderly man - ninety eight years of age! - lay in his hammock strung between two great Kapoks, awaiting his prey. Eyes glinted in the dim canopy, gilded by the evening light - the prime hours of the deadly beast. Long had the aged naturalist longed to bring one of the Jungle’s most vicious, yet beautiful predators back to his homeland, struggling through all manner of maladies and mishaps to be right where he was at that moment.

 

Slowly drawing a breath with all the concentration a human mind might muster - one eye fixed firmly on the flash of the sun from the beast’s tooth - the other to his native batman, bow in hand. Charles Napier wrapped his hand around the stock of his rifle-musket, ready to let loose the shot with the barest twitch of a finger. 

 

In a burst of raw natural power, the Jaguar hurtled forward, a dark streak of death towards the white-haired explorer. Raising the butt of the weapon to his shoulder, he’d fire the shot, a gout of flame and whoosh of smoke erupting from both ends, covering the scene in a thick yellow haze. The arrow had missed its mark - the poor batsman being unfamiliar with the strange new device of the Imperial Naturalist, too struck with fear for himself and his employer. 

 

The shot connected with the Jaguar, striking it in the chest - but did not immediately kill. With a shake of the head, it plunged forward and set its long fangs to the back of Sir Napier’s skull, crushing the back with a ferocious bite - then twirling off the hammock in a pirouette along with the corpse, soon two lying still upon the ground, breaths fading from the pair of hunters. 

 

As he lay upon the hard earth of the Jungle floor, his last breaths upon him - he would utter a glib little phrase, audible only to him… 

 

“Dulce et decorum est pro mori inventionis.”