New day

The Next Day

The sun, coming up over the lake and shining in his face woke him up.
Man, what he would give for a good cup of coffee right now. He did
still have a fruit left so he ate it and went off down the lake
figured the water had to drain back into the ocean sometime.,
somewhere. Nothing here to keep him. He need to find another portal
or get back to the beach and go back to the one he came thru. Why the
time master sent him here he didn't know. He did know that another
Hanks had been sent through the portal, but don't know if the loss for
the time masters to time travel occurred here or not. As he got
closer to the end of the lake he could see it was quite shallow, and
marshy. There were clumps of reeds in places. Scads of trilobites'
were squirming all over in the mud and stirring it up. He probed
ahead of each step in the muddy water in case there might be a hole he
could fall into. Finally reached solid ground again and saw that the
water from the lake was slowly draining down a steep hill. He
followed it down until it started to level out a bit. He had hiked
about a mile or so along the stream when he saw another blue light.
He had to cross the stream and through some brush to get to it . He
stood there wondering just what was on the other side of this portal.
He stepped through and into a land that was smelling like pure sulfur.
The air was a bilious yellow and so heavy he could hardly breath. He
could see he was in a village of some sort with huts made of daub and
wattle. He saw at least four small black skinned naked men, lying on
the ground dead. He heard a roaring sound and more yellow smoke
billowed out of a crevice. Linc started to cough and gag. He ran
back to the portal and stumbled through. Darn it he thought. My
lungs are on fire. He fell to the ground and coughed and coughed.
Finally he was able to sit up and begin to breath normal again. Man if
the lost the power to time travel was in there, he was not going to be
able to find it, he thought. Hard to tell how long the black men were
dead, but they hadn't decomposed yet so must not have been too long
ago.
Linc crossed over the stream again and went on down the slight
grade There were a few rocks here and there and at times the brush was
very heavy. He was beginning to see a lot more trees. The only live
creature was a few trilobites' in the water and scads of huge
cockroaches. As he continued down the slope he began to hear rushing
water. Soon he could see where the small stream was going to empty
into a much larger stream. He followed it down stream and the slope
got a lot steeper. All at once he could hear a roaring sound. Now
what! He thought. Abruptly right ahead of him the stream disappeared.
It went rushing over some rocks and fell about twenty feet over the
cliff. That was the roaring he heard. Linc had to pick his way down
the cliff off to the side of the falls, and landed on a nice sandy
beach of sorts. His legs quivered a bit from the strenuous climb down
the face of the cliff, and he dropped to the sand and sat there a
while. He was getting hungry and it was way past noon, so he decided
to see if there might be fish in the water of the deep pool in front
of him. At least he had water to drink. He had lost the walking
stick in the climb down the cliff and it must have fallen in the water
and was long gone. He went into the trees a bit down stream and found
a couple of sticks. One for a fish pole and a heavier one for a new
walking stick. He rigged up the fish pole and threading on a huge
cockroach for bait, he tossed it into the pool. It was snapped up
almost at once. The fish was like nothing he had ever seen before,
but that would not stop him from eating it. He laid it out on the
sand while he built a fire. He then cleaned the fish and threaded it
onto a couple sticks. Hung it over the fire and went back to the
trees where he had spotted some berries while looking for sticks. He
filled the coconut cup with them, and went back to the fire. Turned
the fish and sat down and ate a few berries. After eating he went on
down the stream. He had to cross several streams that ran it to the
big stream he was following. He figured he must have walked about
eight or nine miles when he began to smell saltwater. He must be
getting closed to the ocean. The daylight was beginning to fade so he
decided to make camp He gathered a bunch of firewood and made a nice
fire. He walked downstream to search foe some kind of food, when he
spotted footprints in the sand. Human footprints. Well now! who
made them? Where were they? He started to go back to the fire when
all at once a bunch of dark skinned and a very light skinned female
with red hair surrounded him. The female spoke with a poor cockney
English accent and told him they were taking him to Papa.

To be continued.