The Return to Jim's Landing

     The expedition, Henry checking the rear

Following on from the loss of supplies on day one, the loss of the Expedition leader and two others on day 2 the expedition now consists of Henry Warton (Scout), Frederick Carrington (Hunter), and seven bearers with 21 days' of food.







From the Diary of Henry Warton:

Day three

Day 3
"We buried our three fellow explorers last evening and decided that we try to carry on exploring as long as we were able, given that we had rations enough for the two of us for ten days and it's probably what Sir Charles would have wanted."
"No sooner had we ventured South-westward into yet another swamp that one of our bearers fell victim to yet another native trap. He fell headlong into a pit, full of venomous snakes, no doubt due to his full pack of rations, sadly he did a horrible death. We moved swiftly on.

I was obviously distracted  by the loss of the bearer, for as we advanced further into the swamp we were ambushed by yet another band of hostile natives, there appeared to be no more than six of them, split into two groups of three, either side of us.
We were in the unfortunate position of being out in the open and I determined that we would make a fighting retreat into cover"

Beating a hasty retreat

Bearers getting to safety

Natives in position to shoot

 "Even whilst we made our measures to defend the bearers, the natives showered us with arrows. There general demeanour, shouting and whooping had obviously disturbed the local wildlife as two lions emerged. We decided that discretion was the better part of valour  in this instance and retreated from view." 

Poor shooting from the natives on the left...

....and from those on the right...

...resulted in two lions appearing.

Explorers out of sight and bearers in cover

 "The lions turned out to be our friends as they turned on the natives to our right whilst we also turned our attentions on them"
One lion swiftly dispatched three of the natives and then both eventually wandered off. The natives to our left had made their escape as their third comrade fell"

yummy

One lion swiftly dispatched three natives

Route for day 4

"Despite having lost a bearer, we were in good spirits but decided nevertheless to return to Jim's Landing the very on the morrow."

Day 4
"Once more,  I easily  found an exit to the swamp and guided our party North rejoining the trail that lead straight back to Jimland. We observed a strange deer-like creature that we couldn't identify, but noted its nature.  Luckily, as we weren't in the mood for any more native encounters, none were encountered."

The "victorious" survivors

 
 Day 5

 "A leisurely start to the day and as we prepared to take the trail back to Jim's Landing, Frederick's keen eye spotted a species of primate, unknown to ourselves, 
The remainder of the journey was without incident.

Terrain board patched with a hill.

This was a very exciting solo game, where I played both sides as best I could and it turned out that the vagaries of the dice determined a lot of it, with the animals generated determining a lot of the action.
As there are only two explorers left I have the decision whether to continue with these two (they gained $131 from the expedition) or to start a fresh one!

In other news, I managed to paint somewhere in the region of 200 scabbard and 50 'waistcoats' on my Sudanese as well as putting a patch on my broken terrain.
Its a piece of polystyrene (like a ceiling tile), fixed in place with matchsticks and PVA, then coated with filler. I left the PVA for two days to dry before applying the filler in two layers again allowing it to dry between layers (24hours each).
Another layer of filler will be applied before sanding and painting, along with another terrain piece. It's only about 15mm tall despite what it looks like in the photo.

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.