The exhausted travelers pushed deeper and deeper into the tangle of endless, sweat-drenched jungle, every weary slash of their machetes revealing more impassable vines than the last.

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Five or six days before—perhaps less—someone in the party had charged headfirst over a dizzying cliff.  The surviving members convinced themselves that the poor fellow must have imagined that he had discovered a clearing ahead, rushed recklessly toward it, and then fallen to his demise a thousand feet below.

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His name was Reginald, but everyone had called him "Reggie," of course.  Like a few who went before him, his aim was to finally liberate their pitiful, dwindling expedition from the choking undergrowth and relentless swarms of stinging insects that plagued them night and day.

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"No matter," said one of them to another, for "they would undoubtedly join him soon enough," as their only map, two days worth of food rations, and other essential provisions were lost to the void with the dead man.

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Some suspected that such misfortune came at the behest of the strange deities the explorers had all mocked so heartily before setting out from the safety and comfort of their colonial outpost. on the disastrous month-long exploration into this inhospitable place.

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