Roatan Odyssey by Anne Jennings Brown.
Category: Biography
Paperback: 320 pages
Language: English
ISBN: 0955760003

" When Howard came towards me with his gun cocked, I did not think anything of it at first. I was sitting by the fire on a little rustic chair Atahualpa had made me only a few days before, looking at the beads I had found that afternoon. He walked slowly, with the gun now leaning on his left arm.

"I’m going to kill you, Anne."

I looked up, unable to take in what he had said. He was in no hurry, taking his time as he stopped near the fire and fingered the trigger.

"Yep! Time’s up! Did you really think I would give you half of this little expedition? Or let you have Fort Fredrick? No siree! I’m going to shoot you and leave you to the wild animals - they’ll do the rest, won’t they? What d’you think?" He walked a step closer and smiled, "No one will ever know, will they? Poor Anne, they’ll say, poor old Anne! She wandered away from the camp in the night - and was never seen again! Jaguars got her -"

In the seconds it took to realise this was the last time I would be sitting by a fire (except possibly the proverbial big one), without consciously thinking and certainly with no time to plan, I swivelled round in the chair, picking it up by its back, and swung it at him, ramming it hard into him, twisting it as I did so. He was taken completely by surprise (as was I!) and didn’t have time to do anything. The gun went flying out of his hand as he bent over in agony. It transpired that, by pure luck, I had broken his trigger finger.

I picked up the gun and backed him into his hammock, collected the pistol, which fortunately he had not been wearing, then grabbed my gun from beside my hammock. I was shaking like a leaf, and still trying to catch up with myself, the possible end of my life, and my reflex action in startled response - all in a matter of minutes.

I could hardly believe I had done it!

I stayed awake all night watching him. Eventually he went to sleep but, knowing Howard of old, I didn’t trust him enough to believe it. At dawn a very perturbed Atahualpa surveyed the scene but fortunately fell in with my plan without questioning it, to march out of the jungle on horseback, he in the lead with Howard’s gun, and me at the back with the other two.

We called at the hunter’s place and I paid off the men, arranging for them to fold up our camp and keep everything for Atahualpa to collect later, as I wanted to give him all our paltry camping equipment as a present.

Atahualpa collected his old mule, on which Howard rode just in case he decided to canter off. He was beginning to quieten down and become reasonable again, just as he had after his brainstorms on Roatan in the past, though I realised this was a seriously well-planned, premeditated ‘brainstorm’, similar to the one that accounted for the Peruvians and their possible demise over Inca gold. I now amended that to ‘probable demise’, and a shiver ran through me.

The saddest moment was handing over Inca to the boar hunter and his family. They promised to look after the ocelot and I felt it was the best option for his future, hoping that one day soon he would take off into the jungle again and resume the life he was born to. In the meantime, I did not fancy the chances of the guinea pigs whom he was sizing up with more than passing interest. "