King Solomon's Mines Page #5

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Oh, by the way,

did you hear anything last night?

I thought I heard a scream.

A human scream, as a matter of fact.

I didn't hear anything.

You must have been dreaming.

Come on, let's get going.

Beth.

You sure you don't wanna go with them?

Lovely, isn't it? It has a sort of majesty.

A feeling of forever.

Forever's quite correct.

- Looks completely peaceful.

- It isn't.

It's been tearing its own thread

for a million years.

In this one small area here,

there are 1000 creatures...

...living, killing, being killed,

eating, being eaten.

There's not an inch that doesn't have war

if you look for it.

Look.

And look there.

- I don't see anything.

- Now, wait a minute. It will move.

That's a mamba. One nip from that,

and you stay here.

Much of the forest lives up there.

The vines keep reaching to the sun.

They make that layer thicker until

they shut out the sun so completely...

...nothing green will ever grow down here.

Look. There's a sight.

Oh, look!

Yeah, a scavenger.

Everybody knows about vultures, but there

are others in the forest that keep it clean.

Hey, careful!

Safari ants. They attack in thousands.

Give them half the chance,

they'll eat you too.

Anteater.

Eating and being eaten.

There isn't a creature in the forest

that isn't hunted.

Except the elephant.

They're afraid of him. He's king.

- The elephant, not the lion?

- No, not the lion. Not in Africa.

Not brave or clever enough.

Elephant's the king.

And man?

Just meat like everything else.

No souls in the jungle,

little justice and no ethics.

In the end, you accept it all.

You watch things hunting and being hunted.

Reproducing, killing and dying.

It's all endless and pointless.

Except, in the end, one small pattern

emerges from it all. The only certainty.

One is born, lives for a time

and dies. That's all.

- All the rest is yeey saba.

- What's that?

Yeey saba?

Oh, it's a game the natives play.

It doesn't make sense. It's quite pointless.

A chases B, B chases C,

C chases A.

Then they go the other way

and make a fuss...

...trying to get things from each other.

Bits of nothing. Twigs and leaves.

It's quite senseless.

Except that the fellow here

has satisfied his desire to be over there...

...everybody's had fun

running after something...

...everybody's grabbed a handful

of stuff they wanted...

...because everybody else wanted them.

And, well, it's endless.

It's quite pointless.

It's a silly game, yeey saba.

I'm sorry.

- Sorry?

- You are sick of life, aren't you.

- What are you talking about, Elizabeth?

- Motives.

- You're being confoundedly enigmatic.

- No, she's not.

She's making very good sense.

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