An earthquake has opened a chasm in an unexplored area of Darkwood. Monstrous animals and repulsive hominids, which kidnap the Indians of the forest, spring from it. Zagor and Chico lower themselves into the crack to look for them and discover the strange, fascinating, cruel world of the abysses...
A strange noise disturbs the stillness of the swamp in which Zagor and Chico live. It is the “mechanical coleopter”, Baron Icaro La Plume’s latest flying machine, which this time has two passengers, the monks Gelsomino and Serafino, arrived in Darkwood to request the Spirit with the Hatchet’s help!
The first 14 plates of the story "A desperate enterprise" (from page 18 to page 31 of Zagor N. 212) are written by Guido Nolitta. From the fifteenth plate the story is conducted by Marcello Toninelli. As revealed by Toninelli himself in the volume Zagor 1982-1993 - Un senese a Darkwood, Nolitta began the story a few years earlier, probably after "Magia senza tempo" (Zagor N. 182), an album which is also clearly referred to in those few plates, but he did not continue it. The story was later assigned to the young Toninelli who continued the plot and script starting from that initial embryo of 14 pages.
