So I was off to America with the would-be Herr Professor, and, to tell the truth, I didn't at all mind the idea. I had become aware in recent months that we men shared the world with a delectable species called girls, and I would find few specimens here in the muddy jungles of Peru, while I was given to understand they were as common in America as was carrapato do chao, the humble ground tick, in this part of the world.
I never saw my father again. An exploding oil pocket in the uplands of Iraq nine months after this sent him to that El Dorado or Valhalla where all old adventurers spend their eternities. God bless him, for the world's a poorer place without him in it.
Not to occupy these pages with an account of the wonders of small-town America, which must be already familiar to my reader―if ever this most unusual journal is fortunate enough to find its way across three hundred and ninety million miles of space to the nearest reader capable of understanding English―I shall pass over the next several years without much more than a summary.
My lack of anything in the way of schooling proved a bit of an impediment. But Mr. Farley―now Assistant Professor Farley―serving in loco parentis, lined up enough tutors for a rash program. I proved, rather surprisingly to all, and especially to myself, an alert, bright student, and before long I was almost up to my age group. I had seen the interior of a schoolroom at last, and found it no less of a jungle in its way than the Matto Grosso had been. And the abstruse mysteries of long division were at last conquered.
Farley was teaching at Harvard, but somehow or other I ended up at Yale. I shall pass over these years briefly: they were happy years. I broke no fewer bones on the football field than do most undergraduates, and no fewer hearts in Lover's Lane, under the stimulus of a ripely golden Connecticut moon. Nor did my own heart escape without a fracture or two; but it's all part of the mystery of what philosophers call "growing up"―as if there was any other direction in which to growl
Oddly enough―for all the heady pleasures of the football field―I found more intoxication in the feel of a rapier in my hands. Quite by chance I discovered a natural affinity for the sword, and for two years running I was captain of Yale's famed fencing team. This, too, like the color of my hair and eyes, was to prove an unexpected blessing when I came to wandering and warring through the black and crimson jungles of barbaric Thanator―but again I am ahead of my story.
Although I was an American citizen by now, the wanderlust had bitten too deep, had struck me too young, for the quiet academic life to hold many attractions for me. I yearned, always, to see what lay beyond the dim horizon . . . over the next range of hills . . . beyond the bright waters of the shining sea.
Before the ink was dry on my sheepskin, I was off. A hasty farewell to the Professor, and I began to wander. The next couple of years took me far and wide. The restlessness, the wanderlust I had inherited from my father took me about the globe. A brief stint of journalism in New York, then I shipped as an ordinary seaman on a merchant tub to Stockholm. I learned to fly in India, of all places, and this led to a bit of refugee-running out of Cuba, arms smuggling in the Near East, and a few flights of medicine and food supplies into blockaded Biafra.
I ended up in Vietnam, and when some technicality over my naturalization papers looked to keep me out of the fight, I joined the Red Cross as a pilot, running supplies and medics into the trouble spots. My thirst for adventure had frequently carried me into trouble from which my fighting instincts had, till now, rescued me without permanent damage. But in Vietnam, something happened .. . .
The Viet Cong terrorists had made a strike at a small village and medical help was needed urgently. So urgently that they hauled me out of my billet on thirty minutes notice. I was to ride herd on a squad of choppers flying in medics and food and flying out the seriously injured.
I had just spent a couple of weeks in Saigon on leave so I was fresh and rested, so to speak. My group was stationed at a temporary field hacked out of the brush on the outskirts of Hon Quan, which is about sixty-five miles north of Saigon and only some ten miles or so from the borders of Cambodia.
We were a half hour out of Hon Quan when my chopper began to develop a bad case of the chokes. Something was wrong with one of the fuel lines, probably a morsel of dirt that had clogged the line. The sort of thing a full mechanic's checkout would have spotted and corrected, but we had been scrambled on notice too short for a full-scale check.
And that meant I was in trouble. We didn't have the big two- and three-man combat choppers the American army used; on rescue missions like these all I had was a little one-man copter. The cargo craft were up ahead, needed to fly out the injured. So I was all by myself.
I radioed the rest of the squadron and told them my second-in-command would take over as I was having engine trouble and would probably fall behind. They went on ahead while I dropped back, trying to figure out what to do. We were flying over some of the densest jungles on earth and there was nowhere to sit her down safely. If I could find a flat space to sit her down I could probably fix the trouble in no time, even if I had to unscrew one of the lines and blow the obstruction out.
I circled for a while, hunting. There was a chance, a slim one, that the line would clear itself, but I couldn't count on it. If the motor conked out I would crash in the treetops. A chopper comes down slowly, even without power, because the air catches and turns the blades, braking the rate of fall. That's the nice thing about these flying eggbeaters.
The bad thing is you are flying too low to bail out with a parachute.
I began to sweat.
For a half-hour I played with that chopper like a virtuoso with a Bach concerto, getting every ounce of go-power I could squeeze from my laboring engine. I couldn't return to base because I knew there was no landing area between there and here, having just flown over the same piece of countryside. But―who could say? Off to the west a bit there might be a clearing. I nursed her carefully in that direction.
A while later I spotted a flash of light, the yellow-brown glisten of a jungle river. My chopper was fitted out with pontoon gear, of course. Half the land in this desolate corner of the globe is swamp and marsh. If I could make it to that river I could at least make a landing.
I began wondering just where I was. No river of that size should be in my neighborhood. I must have flown farther afield in my search for landing space than I had suspected.
Could it be the Mekong? If so, I was in trouble. The Mekong isn't in Vietnam at all, but over the border in Cambodia. It traverses eastern Cambodia from north to south and empties into the South China Sea. And Cambodia is a place we were not supposed to be. A so-called "neutral" country, its ruler, Prince Sihanouk, might be a jolly host to visiting American VIP's like Jackie Kennedy, but he was mighty inhospitable when it came to lost or strayed or crashed American pilots who violated what he laughingly called the neutrality of his borders―which the Cong are suspected to cross regularly.
But beggars cannot be choosers. Just as my chopper came over the broad, gliding floods of the jungle river, my exhausted engine gave one last strangled croak and died. The chopper fell like a stone. Then the uprush of air caught the dead blades. They creaked and began to turn. The rate of descent lessened―not much, but just enough.