Zebra Island

The shape of the island fits in a trapeze with a deep bay cut in the Northern coast. It is close to one hundred miles in its greatest diagonal. Its Western half bears a crystalline mountrain range with fat profiles, cut by furious torrents, and looks like the back of a giant animal, reaching at several points about one thousand nine hundred meters above sea level. The South-East is dominated by a high land, five hundred meter above sea level, which barely leaves any space for some narrow coastal low lands and extends to the North while losing of its altitude. Between Wollowhale and Loodlin-a-Doodlin', the Green Triangle is a fertile lowland which becomes larger while opening on Sea-Pigs'Sipping - a deep-cut bay in the Northern coast.

The mountainous region has probably not been visited as far as can a Pirate remember, the highland is the core of the island in many respects but few came back to tell what they saw there; at least, the coastal lowlands are sometimes visited by Pirates, generally against their will.

Viewed from a Boat, the Western and South-Western coasts of the island are made of high cliffs cut by hanging valleys and ravines which quickly disappear in the clouds, almost permanently settled on the mountains tops. Severall waterfalls fall directly in the sea; the most famous falls from a height of more than eight hundred meters and, most surprising of all actually, its colour changes over time: Navigators thus named it rightly the Rainbow Event. On that side the sea becomes immediately deep.

If we go on sailing, to the East along the Southern coast of the island, on our right emerges Badyglue and in front of us lies a dangerous narrow pass between the two islands with coral walls and high sands right below the surface. Coastal low lands and cliffs of various heights alternate. Having gone through the pass and passed by two islands which surge to the South-East – the Column and the Table, two self-explanatory names for island shapes cut in steep cliffs battered by swell, so much that it is unthinkable to land there - there we are, now sailing to the North along the Eastern coast. Numerous islets populate the sea near Zebra Island and are actually the continuation under water of the hill landscape coming down from the Loud Higland. Here and there, a few coastal low lands. Colours of the island, plants or minerals, are vivd in the sunshine and, most remarkably, they stretch over the complete spectrum of the Rainbow, possibly even including colours not seen by Man…

Passing by Kaybbap to the North-East, we come close to the waters of the Sea-Pigs'Sipping on the North side. It is not necessarily the best place to land, Sea-Pigs being very aggressive ever-hungry all-eating amphibian creatures. The green medows spreading in the background - the lowlands of Foggy Shinings - are a highly treacherous place… Often unthinkable and dangerous things go down from the Loodlin-a-Doodlin' for some lurking there!

It is truly a mysterious island, loaded with a colourful Voodoo magic: it dyes objects and beings. It has a sinister reputation – and deserves it! – but continues to entice many Pirates and Adventurers who believe it gives access to an immense power… Even if nobody really knows what it is all about, however it is said that it is under the control of the Great Z…-Lwa, a Lwa of Voodoo powers which are said to be very strange – Hattean Bokor lose their « Language » when it comes to it if one daresay! Moreover, one says that it is populated by zebras, where its name would come from, and there would even be more to it than that! At any rate, the core of the mystery seems to lie on the Loud Highland. And the mystery of Zebra Island has a good deal to do with the intense search of many Pirates for the Log Books of the Captain Lamarck… The legend has it actually that he would be one of the few survivors who came back sane (?) from the first exploration of the island.

The mountainous region was probably never explored - more precisely, nobody came back to tell something about it! The coastal lowlands, particularly Foggy Shinings, despite a welcoming and insignificant aspect, hide probably dangers to be taken very seriously; it seems that the colourful fog which forms there or near the shores simply eat passing by Ships and Crews away and without return – such an event is described by the Captain Gomesh in 42 but it is difficult to say whether the three Ships he lost hit coral reefs then quickly sank or whether they really were swallowed by the fog… Expeditions which came back from Zebra Island – there are not many! – all landed on the South-Eastern part of the island, in the shadow of the Column, on the Kayppebble, a completely unhospitable cape with the only advantage that fog rarely develops there…

From there, routes have been found to access to Loodlin-a-Doodlin' - difficult ones - through dark defiles cut deep in the sandstone of the highland. And when one finally reaches there - it starts more precisely shortly before - the first thing of all is the sound like phonolith on which one would step… But there is no such stone there nor is there anybody to be seen… Loodlin-a-Doodlin' bears so many things that it could potentially have been given many another name but, since most of the expeditions which came back explored very little of it or nothing at all, hence the strange phony thing remained as the element which stroke minds the most…