Dark Rapture

Loaded with sixteen tons of equipment and supplies for a two-year journey, the Denis-Roosevelt expedition arrives in Brussels and is greeted at the Royal Palace by King Albert and his reigning son, His Majesty King Leopold III. The expedition then crosses through France, Spain, the Straits of Gibraltar, and into Africa. After crossing the punishing Sahara Desert, they penetrate Central Africa, where huge herds of wild game reside. In another thousand miles, the expedition reaches the Belgian Congo, where they find the primitive life of the jungle unchanged. Escorted by Wagenian fishermen, the expedition makes its last river crossing traveling down the Congo in canoes that have been hollowed out of a single two-hundred foot tree. Near the great Falls of the Congo, the Wagenias lead the expedition to their village, where they are welcomed with a dance. Next the expedition arrives at the court of King Niapu, leader of the Manbeta people, whom the Europeans refer to as "Longheads" because as children their heads are bound with flexible vines that force their skulls to grow upward. At the government station at Gangala-na-bodio, the expedition observes thirteen young elephants begin the long process of domestication, which includes learning to lie down on command and bear a man on their backs. After crossing a lake, the expedition enters the jungle, the "last home of mystery in Africa." There, they hope to witness a tribe's secret initiation ritual, which takes place every five years. After having spent the first eight-to-ten years of their life with the women of the tribe, young boys are placed in isolation in a crude forest camp, where they are instructed in the mysteries of the tribe and are left exposed to the dangers of the jungle. Before the final sacred ritual, the men of the tribe assemble in the center of the village and endure voluntary flagellation, proving their disregard of physical suffering by unchanged facial expressions. Dressed in skirts of leaves, the boys then are taken to the sacred stream, where no woman may follow. The boy's feet are immersed in the water and, as his father stands nearby, undergoes the final test of courage, circumcision. If the boy shows himself a coward, disgrace will follow for both him and his father. Farther into the jungle, the expedition greets the nomadic Pygmies. The women are shown smoking pipes ten feet long, and the men are shown making poison arrows. Later they ritualistically open the carcass of an elephant, a gift from the expedition, and the chief distributes the meat with his mouth. Next the expedition traverses a barrier of volcanic mountains in Rwanda to visit a tribe of seven-foot "giants," the Watusi, who fish in sulphur springs. The expedition is greeted in Nianza, the court of King Rudahigwa IV. Back in the jungle, the expedition witnesses the Pygmies building a sixty-foot high vine bridge that spans 173 feet over a crocodile-infested river. Because the Pygmies cannot swim, they must build a bridge each time they come to a body of water. Ten months into the journey, the explorers return to the elephant training station at Gangala-na-Bodio, where they will witness the capture of an elephant. A herd of 800 elephants is sighted. Captain Offerman leads the expedition across miles of grasslands. After several attempts, including one in which an elephant, nearly captured, pulls up a tree by its roots, the expedition films a capture. When the expedition is seventy miles from its base, a dry lightning storm sets off an enormous brush fire. In fleeing the fire, the expedition abandons all of its equipment except the film and heads for the nearest river. They arrive safely, and the next morning, a man arrives from the elephant station, and they are rescued.