The First
Photo by Dave Bunnell, retrieved via Creative Commons, edited and processed by Badlands.
1907 – Yucatan Peninsula
If I were back in London, I would be spending my morning with a leisurely cup of tea and cataloguing maps brought back by explorers in the quiet hush of the library reference stacks. My work for the Royal Geographical Society in the past five years since I graduated from university has been uneventful and solitary, so when the opportunity to go on an expedition came up I took it.
But, as I surveyed the acres-wide crater in the ground we were about to be lowered down into, I was regretting my snap decision to sign on.
Expedition leader Thomas Swift was flitting around the edge of the crater, watching the villagers we hired construct the apparatus that would drop us and our rowboat down into the deep water filled cave system below. With nervous energy, Swift barked orders to the workers in fluent Yucatec and checked his maps again. He was sure this was the place.
Swift has been searching the Yucatan exclusively for the last decade for evidence of an ancient Mayan ceremonial site said to be full of treasure. Legend says ancient Mayans would travel by boat through an underground river beneath the jungle to honor their gods.
“Have you got the materials ready?” he said, towering over me. “If this is it, we need to gather as many specimens for the museum as possible.”
If we failed, there wouldn’t be another Royal Geographical Society funded expedition. Swift had reached the end of his rope with his financial backers back in England.
One of the workers signaled from the edge of the drop off for us to climb aboard and head into the cave. Swift had the villagers rig up a pulley system, like off the side of a sailing ship, for a wooden rowboat to descend two hundred feet down to the clear blue water below.
We both gingerly stepped onto the rocking boat, suspended over the empty space, and held on tight as we lowered down to the surface with sharp jerking motions. I gripped my sketchbook as we dropped past the sun dappled limestone wall before it curved inward back into the cave. The villagers silently peered down at us as the ropes stretched us further and further from the jungle.
Swift scrambled to the bow of the boat, consulted his map and directed the villager to take us into the largest opening on the far edge of the crystal clear blue pool. As we moved across the massive rip in the Earth revealing the underwater river, I dared to look over the side and into the depths below.
The bottom looked reachable, but Swift had already warned me it was hundreds of feet deep and even the most capable divers died trying to reach it.
“I will prove those city-dwelling bastards wrong,” Swift said, his voice echoing off the walls and water’s surface deep into the cave as we left the sunlight. “I will find this place and it will make the finest museum display anyone has ever seen.”
The roof of the cave towered above us when we first entered, but as we moved further and further in it slowly lowered to be only a few feet above our heads. I lit the torches mounted on either side of the boat when the last of the sunlight petered out.
The tunnel at the back of the cave branched off in three different directions, with one looking round and inviting and the other two craggy and narrow.
Silently, the villager pointed to the narrowest of the three openings and slowly rowed toward it. When we reached the gap, we squeezed through the rock with only half an inch of give on each side.
“He’s really going to show us where it is?” I asked. “I thought the location was lost to history forever.”
“Don’t underestimate the old-fashioned power of persuasion,” Swift said, with his hand gripping the machete in his belt.
We rowed on into the darkness and I took down detailed notes of the twists and turns in the cave so we could make our way back. With one final squeeze through a tight space, we passed into a room so large the torchlight couldn’t reach either of the walls.
“We’ve got to be almost there,” Swift said, muttering under his breath.
We continued to row into the black maw of the cavern, the water lapping on the edges of the walls sounding farther away with every stroke. The torches were burning low and I reached down for the replacements, but the villager stopped me and silently pointed upward.
A soft glow appeared above us, thousands of blue pinpricks of light appearing on the ceiling as the light dimmed. Dotting the roof like stars, they spread out across the pitch-black firmament as far as I could see.
“No way,” Swift said, his soft voice echoed from the front of the boat. “These glow worms have only been found in one cave in New Zealand before. We are the first people in the world to see this.”
Above us off to the right, some of the blue spots of light blinked out and the dark silhouette of a man reared up on some unseen outcropping with one of his arms arching back into space.
Swift only got a few words into his Yucatec greeting before the telltale sound of an arrow ripped through the air and sliced through his neck. He tumbled back into the boat, blood burbling from his throat.
The villager stood above him in the rocking boat and took him by the collar.
“You were not the first,” he said, in perfect English.
I sat frozen in the dark as the torches finally winked out. One final gasp came from Swift’s end of the boat before his body hit the water.
“Don’t move,” the villager said. “It will be quicker.” ■
Leigh Williams has been writing professionally for the past four years in Idaho and elsewhere. In her free time she enjoys reading, spending time outdoors and going to the movies.