The beach sand was hot under our feet, even through our shoes we could feel it. After I had gathered my wits and taken care of Charlotte, who was very brave and handling our ordeal almost better than I did, I tried to think as a scientist and approached the female body laying on the sand.

Her face was pale and spotted with sand. The body was warm, even in death, a fact that I could only attribute to the warm climate. Her body was draped in some kind of light fabric, covering the torso and the upper part of the legs. The rest of her legs were exposed, very inappropriately. Logic suggested that this woman was a primitive native of some sort. What had killed her was apparent. There was a large wound in her midsection, a lot of blood on her clothing. The damage had most assuredly been fatal.

The wound was small and round, as if made by a spear. I concluded that there must have been some kind of upset or fighting which had resulted in her death. Charlotte and I was perhaps entering the staging ground for a battle between local tribes.

The weight of the gun that I had bought for protection was heavy against my side and the pressure felt reassuring in the circumstances. With this added courage Charlotte and I looked around our immediate area to ascertain our position. Were we alone? Would this woman's assassins return?

The beach on which our trunk was situated was about 20 yards deep and continued in a slow curve out of sight. Inlands it ended in a tree line, with thick foliage. It would be possible to go that way, but we would probably need some cutting instruments to make our way through the jungle. Fortunately, I had brought such tools with me. The trunk was halfway up the beach and most likely safe from being washed away. The structure of the beach indicated that the water never reached this high.

So we took out some equipment, including a large blade called a machete that I had bought from a man who had recently returned from an expedition to Africa. He swore by it and had told me that it was the single most useful thing imaginable in a savage wilderness, not only for protection against wild animals, and savages for that matter, but also for cutting down branches, making fire, cutting rope and a thousand other reasons. We locked the trunk and armed with gun and machete we made our way into the forest toward the structure I had seen through the dimensional clock's looking glass. The clock itself rested on my back in my rucksack. I would not leave it and chance that some native would carry it off. The clock was our ticket back home in case of danger.

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