Quesion5:
A cold hand grasped his wrist as he slumped to
his knees.
Write a story which includes these words.
_____________________________________________________
This story is based on Question 5 above.
A Miner’s Story
The gold bearing plateau of the Guiana Shield is every miner‟s
destination. But many times, it is also their doom. The rainforest
holds a hellish hatred, a demonic grudge against all intruders, and
batters them, strangles them, and eventually, destroys them.
Amazonia is no place for man, and here, nature reigns supreme.
The men trudged through the mud, in the sunken crater,
somewhere in the middle of nowhere. All around them were trees,
in excess of fifty metres high, ferns, creepers, moss and lianas.
The world of vegetation was grey-green, alien to mankind, as the
early morning fog hung low among the ferns. This team was here,
for gold, but man cannot tame nature. All of them, faces haggard
and mud-streaked, clothes torn with dried blood in dark spots, their
rifles and digging tools already rusting with moisture were on
death row. They had a fouled compass, no medicine, and half of
the original eight-man team was lost; dead, in the middle of
nowhere.
Carl Royston shook his head, cursed under his breath. He was a
young miner from one of the villages in the mountains, but he
looked twice as old as he was now, as the men lethargically
stumbled through the perpetual gloom in the barely penetrable
rainforest. He glanced at Lewis, his number one rival. Lewis was
a big, burly, bearded buffalo of a man. Lewis stared at him,
scowled as they moved deeper into the bowels of the forest. Carl
hated Lewis with all his heart, for reasons he chose not to
remember. Now they were together, members of the same team in
the heathen jungle.
“Hold up, rapids,” was the call from Mason, up ahead. A
cascading torrent was before them, foaming white water
thundering around jagged black rocks on the riverbed. Funny, he
hadn‟t...