I rather suspect that we're never going to see the full picture of this puzzle, but let's hope we get enough pieces to work out what the Elizabethtown folk are up to... :)
Pieces of the puzzle We walked inside, and all three of us saw the scratches on the floor: deeply incised and in all directions, criss-crossing and in places tearing up the stone so badly that there was a kind of sawdust there made entirely from shredded stone. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it possible to do that to rock. We walked around the edges of the room, instinctively keeping away from where the clawmarks were. There were two doors apart from the one we'd come in by; one led into a stairwell where the stairs went both up and down, and the other opened into another large room like this one with windows on the far side overlooking the dock. The ceilings were high and our footsteps echoed oddly as we walked, sometimes a single crisp echo resounding, and other times two or three echoes overlapping in an odd, off-pitch chorus. From the windows we could see a grassy slope that started off gentle and then got steeper towards the bottom: I decided that it would be a struggle to climb that slope until you were at least half way up it. At the bottom the stone took over again and there was a broad esplanade that stretched the river's edge. A short distance along it to the right, the dock appeared: large wooden beams that looked to have been brought in from somewhere else poked outwards from the stone and made for a place for a boat to be tied up to and somewhat sheltered from the water. It was clear that the dock was a much later addition, and that it intruded deep into the water to still it and calm it here. This had the effect of making the water further out much more turbulent, and we could all see white-topped waves crash on the far bank, and eddies and whorls of water shoot off downstream. Tied up to the dock was a boat sitting low in the water. It looked to have a hold and a single deck, and while there was a mast with a sail attached the sail was a sad-looking thing that clearly wasn't intended to propel the boat, but rather to provide additional steering when the wind was strong. I'd have taken it down, and the mast too, myself, but I'm not much of a sailor. There were oars that I could see: six on the far side and presumably as many on the near side hidden by the dock. The boat itself was hung around with rubber tyres and looked battered and storm-ravaged. "Why the tyres?" asked Jimmy. "Protection," said Ben while I was thinking about it. "That thing is going to bounce down that river like a cork: the tyres will protect it from the rock walls somewhat - doesn't much change the impact, but at least you're not gouging your wood on the rock every single time." He scratched his head, and his hands started doing the familiar tap-dance of hunting for his cigars. "They seem to have found plenty of something to take out of here though. I guess they have more pieces of this puzzle than we do." "I'm glad we didn't try stealing the boat," I said. "I'm pretty certain we couldn't have, and we definitely couldn't have rowed it ourselves-" I pointed the oars out to Jimmy, who'd missed them, "-and it would have been suicide to try and go along that river anyway." Ben grunted, and then grinned like a child at Christmas as he located his cigars. "We might have made it through in one piece," he said.
You've created a wonderfully creepy atmosphere in this El Dorado, with all the little oddities (and larger ones as well) combining to make the place incredibly unsettling. And I am pleased to finally get a view of the boat!
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I rather suspect that we're never going to see the full picture of this puzzle, but let's hope we get enough pieces to work out what the Elizabethtown folk are up to... :)
Pieces of the puzzle
We walked inside, and all three of us saw the scratches on the floor: deeply incised and in all directions, criss-crossing and in places tearing up the stone so badly that there was a kind of sawdust there made entirely from shredded stone. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it possible to do that to rock. We walked around the edges of the room, instinctively keeping away from where the clawmarks were. There were two doors apart from the one we'd come in by; one led into a stairwell where the stairs went both up and down, and the other opened into another large room like this one with windows on the far side overlooking the dock. The ceilings were high and our footsteps echoed oddly as we walked, sometimes a single crisp echo resounding, and other times two or three echoes overlapping in an odd, off-pitch chorus.
From the windows we could see a grassy slope that started off gentle and then got steeper towards the bottom: I decided that it would be a struggle to climb that slope until you were at least half way up it. At the bottom the stone took over again and there was a broad esplanade that stretched the river's edge. A short distance along it to the right, the dock appeared: large wooden beams that looked to have been brought in from somewhere else poked outwards from the stone and made for a place for a boat to be tied up to and somewhat sheltered from the water. It was clear that the dock was a much later addition, and that it intruded deep into the water to still it and calm it here. This had the effect of making the water further out much more turbulent, and we could all see white-topped waves crash on the far bank, and eddies and whorls of water shoot off downstream.
Tied up to the dock was a boat sitting low in the water. It looked to have a hold and a single deck, and while there was a mast with a sail attached the sail was a sad-looking thing that clearly wasn't intended to propel the boat, but rather to provide additional steering when the wind was strong. I'd have taken it down, and the mast too, myself, but I'm not much of a sailor. There were oars that I could see: six on the far side and presumably as many on the near side hidden by the dock. The boat itself was hung around with rubber tyres and looked battered and storm-ravaged.
"Why the tyres?" asked Jimmy.
"Protection," said Ben while I was thinking about it. "That thing is going to bounce down that river like a cork: the tyres will protect it from the rock walls somewhat - doesn't much change the impact, but at least you're not gouging your wood on the rock every single time." He scratched his head, and his hands started doing the familiar tap-dance of hunting for his cigars. "They seem to have found plenty of something to take out of here though. I guess they have more pieces of this puzzle than we do."
"I'm glad we didn't try stealing the boat," I said. "I'm pretty certain we couldn't have, and we definitely couldn't have rowed it ourselves-" I pointed the oars out to Jimmy, who'd missed them, "-and it would have been suicide to try and go along that river anyway."
Ben grunted, and then grinned like a child at Christmas as he located his cigars. "We might have made it through in one piece," he said.
Greg - yes, let us hope so.
You've created a wonderfully creepy atmosphere in this El Dorado, with all the little oddities (and larger ones as well) combining to make the place incredibly unsettling. And I am pleased to finally get a view of the boat!
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