The overloaded ark, p.7
The Overloaded Ark, page 7
He returned quickly to say that he was too short to reach the only available footholds, and so Andraia would have to do the climbing. Andraia disappeared round the trunk, and shortly after scraping noises and subdued ejaculations of “Eh . . . aehh!” announced that he was on his way up. Elias and I moved a bit closer, keeping our torches steady on the hole. Andraia was two-thirds of the way up when the occupant of the hole showed itself: a large civet. Its black-masked face blinked
down at us, and I caught a glimpse of its grey, black-spotted body. Then it drew back into the hole again
“Careful, Andraia, na bushcat,” whispered Elias warningly, for a full-grown civet is the size of a small collie dog.
But Andraia was too busy to answer, for clinging to the bark of the trunk with fingers and prehensile toes was a full-time job. Just as he reached the edge of the hole the civet launched itself out into space like a rocket. It shot through the air, and landed accurately on Elias’s chest with all four feet, its weight sending him spinning backwards. As it landed on his chest I saw its mouth open and close, and heard the chop of its jaws. It only missed making its teeth meet in his face because he was already off his balance and starting to fall backwards, and so its jaws missed him by about three inches. It leapt lightly off his prostrate body, paused for one brief moment to stare at me, and then in a couple of swift leaps disappeared into the forest. Elias picked himself up and grinned at me ruefully:
“Eh . . . aehh! Some man done put bad ju-ju for dis hunting I tink,” he said. “First we lose water- beef, next dis bush-cat. . . .”
“Consider yourself lucky you’ve still got a face left,” I said, for I had been considerably shaken by this display of ferocity on the part of the civet, an animal I had always thought was shy and retiring. Just at that moment a strangled yelp came from above us, and we shone our torches up to where Andraia was clinging like a lanky black spider.
“Na whatee?” asked Elias and I together.
“Na something else dere dere for inside,” said Andraia shrilly. “I hear noise for inside hole. . . .” He felt in his loincloth, and with some difficulty he withdrew his torch and shone it into the hole.
“Eh ... aehh!” he shouted, “na picken bushcat here for inside.”
For a long time Andraia performed the most extraordinary contortions to try and cling on to the tree, while shining the torch into the hole with one hand and endeavouring to insert the other into the hole to catch the baby. At length he succeeded, and his hand came into view holding a spitting, squirming young civet by the tail. Just as he got it out of the hole and was shouting, “Look um, look um,” in triumph, the baby bit him in the wrist.
Now Andraia was a complete coward about pain: if he got the smallest thorn in his foot he would put on an exaggerated limp as though he had just had all his toes amputated. So the sharp baby teeth of the civet were like so many hot needles in his wrist. Uttering an unearthly shriek he dropped the
torch, the civet, and released his precarious hold on the tree. He, the torch, and the civet crashed earthwards.
How Andraia was not killed by the fall I shall never know: the torch was smashed, and the baby civet landed on its head on one of the iron-hard buttress roots of the tree, and was knocked unconscious. It had a severe haemorrhage about ten minutes later and died without regaining consciousness. Andraia, apart from being severely shaken, was unhurt.
“Eh . . . aehh! Na true some man done put ju-ju for us,” said Elias again. Whether it was ju-ju or not, we were not worried by ill-luck for the rest of the night: on the contrary, we had very good luck. Shortly after our little affair with the civet we came to the banks of a wide stream, about three feet deep in the middle. The water was opaque, a deep chocolate brown colour, and even our torch beams could not pierce it. We had to wade up this stream for about half a mile, until we came to the path on the opposite bank which we were following. Though the surface of the stream was unruffled, there was a considerable undercurrent, and we felt it clutch our legs as we waded in. The water was ice-cold. We had reached the centre and were wading along as swiftly as the deep water and the current would let us, when I became aware that we were not the only occupants of the stream. All around us, coiling and shooting through the dark waters, were dozens of brown water snakes. They swam curiously alongside us, with only their heads showing above water, their tiny eyes glittering in the torchlight. Andraia became conscious of the snakes’ presence at the same moment, but his reactions were not the same as mine.
“Warr!”he screamed, and dropping the collecting bag he was carrying, he tried to run for the bank. He had forgotten the water. Here it was almost waist high, and any attempt at running was doomed to failure almost before it was started. As I had anticipated, the strength of the current caught him off his balance, and he fell into the water with a splash that sent every water-snake diving for cover. He surfaced some yards downstream, and struggled to his feet. His lovely sarong, which he had been carefully carrying on his head to protect it, was now a sodden mass.
“Na whatee?” asked Elias, turning round and surveying Andraia, wallowing in the stream like a wounded whale. He, apparently, had not seen the snakes.
“Na snake Elias,” spluttered Andraia, “na snake too much for dis water. Why we no fit pass for land?”
“Snake?” asked Elias, shining his torch about the calm waters.
“Na true, Elias,” I said, “na water-snake. Andraia de fear too much.”
“Eh . . . aehh!” exclaimed Elias wrathfully. “You stupid man, Andraia. You no savvay dis beef no go bite you if Masa be here?”
“Ah!” said Andraia, humbly, “I done forget dis ting.”
“What’s all this?” I asked. “Why snake no bite Andraia if I’m here?”
Standing in the middle of the stream while Andraia fished about for the collecting bag, Elias explained to me:
“If black man go for water him only, some kind of bad beef, like snake, go smell him, he go come one time and chop him. If black man go for water with white man, de beef smell de white man and he de fear too much, so he no go come.” “Only when we go for water dis ting happen?” I asked. “Yes, sah.”
It was a useful piece of knowledge, and I stored it away in my memory for future use. Andraia had by now collected all the things he had dropped, and I suggested that we should turn out the torches and wait to see if the water-snakes returned and, if they did, try to catch some. With a certain lack of enthusiasm my hunters agreed. We stood there in the water, in complete darkness, for about half an hour and then, at a prearranged signal, we all switched on our torches together. All around us were water-snakes, weaving silver patterns in the torchlight. Seizing the net I plunged after the nearest, and after a scramble, managed to get him hissing and wriggling into the net, and from there into the bag. Thus encouraged, Elias and Andraia joined in and within a very short time we had captured twenty of these snakes. But now they were growing wise, and the slightest movement on our part would send them all diving to the murky depths of the river, so we called off the hunt and continued on our way.
I don’t know what the attraction of that river was for these snakes, as I never saw them congregated in one spot in such numbers again. Often in the day, and also during our night hunts, we had waded long distances up rivers, but only occasionally had we seen an odd water-snake. In the half-mile we travelled up that stream we saw hundreds of them. It may have been some sort of mating gathering, or maybe a sudden abundance of food in that particular area which had attracted them. We never found out. Some weeks later we crossed the same stream at the same point during the night, and not a snake was to be seen. In places like this you come into contact with many enigmas of this sort, but, unfortunately, you have not the opportunity to investigate as fully as you would like. You can do little more than note them, and wonder about the reason. It is one of the most annoying things about collecting, that you have not the time to investigate these riddles and find an answer, fascinating though that investigation might prove.
We came at last to the place where we had our meeting with the “water-beef”, and though we beat the low growth thoroughly, we did not flush another. So we gave it up as a bad job and walked along the sandy banks towards the cliff where Elias said there were some caves. As we rounded the bleached carcass of a huge tree that had fallen across the bank I saw something glowing on the sand ahead of us.
“Elias, na whatee dat?” I asked, pointing.
“Na fire, sah,” he replied.
“A fire, out here?”
“Yes, sah, I tink some hunter man sleep here.”
As we walked nearer I saw that the glow was caused by the embers of a small fire. Next to the fire was a tiny, frail lean-to made out of saplings and creepers.
“Ahey!” called Elias, “someone ’e dere dere?”
There was a stirring in the depths of the hut and a black face, sleep-crumpled, peered out at us.
“Na who?” asked the stranger, and I could see he was reaching for his muzzle-loader which lay beside him. Hastily we turned our torches on to ourselves so that he could see who we were.
“Eh . . . aehh!” he gasped. “Na white man dis?” “Yes,” said Elias, “na white man dis.”
“What thing white man do for bush for nighttime?” asked the stranger, and I could see a suspicion dawning on his face that perhaps we were some sort of terrible ju-ju in disguise.
“We hunt for beef,” said Elias.
I kicked the dying fire into a small flame, sat down beside it and produced cigarettes. The stranger accepted one, but he still kept a hand on his gun.
“Elias,” I said, “bring more stick for dis fire, den we get more light, den dis man fit see I be a white man proper and not ju-ju.” Elias and Andraia laughed, and the man essayed a feeble smile and removed his hand from his gun.
We built up the fire and sat round it smoking, while Elias explained to the man who we were, and what we were doing, and from whence we came. The man, it transpired, was a wandering hunter. These men live in the forest, shooting what they can, and drying the meat. When they have as much as they can manage they trek into the nearest township and sell the meat at the market, buy fresh powder with the proceeds and set off to the bush again. This man had had very good luck, for he had shot four full-grown drills, and he showed us the dismembered bodies, dried by wood smoke. The largest male must have been a magnificent brute in life, and his dried arm, strangely like a mummy’s, was knotted with great muscles. His hands and his skull with the flesh dried close to the bone looked decidedly human. We, in our turn, explained what we were doing, and showed the hunter the water-snakes, which he was not enthusiastic over. When we rose to go I dashed him four cigarettes and he, in turn, presented me with a drill leg, saying that it was “very fine chop for white man and black”. I ate this leg in a stew, and the hunter was proved correct: it was very fine chop indeed, with a delicate and succulent flavour of beef with the faintest tang of wood smoke about it.
At last we came to the caves: they were in the face of a cliff heavily overgrown with ferns and moss, intermingled with the long creepers that hung down from the trees that grew on the top of the cliff. The usual tumbled mass of boulders littered the base, intergrown with shrubs and bushes. The largest cave was the size of a small room, and from it ran a number of narrow, low tunnels. These, however, were too small to allow us to crawl up them, so we had to content ourselves with lying on our stomachs and shining the torch up in the hopes of seeing something.
Presently we each took a section of the cliff and started a search on our own. I came to another series of these small tunnels, and as I walked along flashing my torch about, something leapt out of the undergrowth ahead and shot into one of them. I hurried to the spot, but I had not much hope of being able to corner whatever it was now that it had gained the sanctuary of its tunnel. Crouching down I shone the torch inside, and discovered that it was a false tunnel, that is to say it ran about eight feet back into the cliff face and then ceased abruptly. The floor of the tunnel was covered with various sized boulders, and the walls were gnarled and full of dark corners and crevices. I could not see the animal, but I presumed that it was hiding somewhere in there as there was, as far as I could see, no exit. Andraia and Elias were some distance away, and I did not like to shout to them to come and help as the more silently one worked the better one’s chances of surprising an animal. So I lowered myself to the ground, hung the collecting bag round my neck, put the torch in my mouth, and proceeded to crawl up the tunnel on my stomach. This method is supposed to be the time- honoured one for stalking game, but I found it quite the most painful means of progression known to man. Erosion had given the boulders, which so liberally littered the floor of the tunnel, a razor like cutting edge to their corners, and most of them had apparently been carefully designed to fit snugly into the more delicate parts of the human anatomy, and thus cause the maximum amount of pain.
I crawled on grimly until I reached the small circular “room” at the end of the tunnel leading off into the depths of the earth. I struggled towards it, and as I reached its mouth a curious sound issued from it, a harsh, rustling rattle, a pause, two thumps, and then silence. I started to crawl closer when the rattling recommenced, a pause, the two thumps were repeated, and then silence. I hastily ran over the list of Cameroon fauna in my mind, but the noise did not seem to belong to anything that I knew of, so I continued my advance with increased caution. Reaching the tunnel I shone my torch inside and found to my surprise that it was also a cul-de-sac, only a much shorter one than the one I was in. As I was flashing my torch round in an effort to see what had produced the noise, there was another burst of rattling, something jumped forward, the torch was knocked out of my hand, and a sharp stinging pain assailed my fingers. I grabbed the torch and backed away hurriedly, and then sat down to examine my hand. On the back of it were a number of spots of blood, and a few deep scratches which now commenced to sting. It looked as though I had plunged my hand into a blackberry bush. I thought about this for a few minutes and then suddenly I realized what it was I had to deal with, one of the commonest animals in the Cameroons, and the only one that could make that noise: a Brush-tailed Porcupine. I was annoyed that I had not thought of it before.
I crawled back, and, with greater care, shone my torch in: there, sure enough, was the porcupine, standing half-turned to me, his spines bristling, and his curious tail rattling like mad. He would give a prolonged rattle on his tail, and then follow it up by stamping his hind feet petulantly, exactly as a rabbit will do when it is scared. He was about the size of a cat, though it was a little difficult to judge accurately, as his erect spines made him look larger. As all his spines pointed backwards he naturally had to stand with his bottom half turned to me, and he peered over his shoulder with his moist black eyes prominent with a mixture of anger and fear. He was mostly black in colour, except for the spines that covered his lower back, which was handsomely patched with black and white. His long tail, which he kept in a U-shape half over his back, was bare of both fur and spines. On its very tip was a curious cluster of spines which had no points: they looked like a head of wheat, pure white, thick and long. It was this appendage on his tail which produced the rattling noise, for now and again he would stiffen his tail and rattle these hollow, harmless spines together with a crisp crackling sound. He was all keyed up and alert for trouble.
I began to wonder what to do. It really needed two people to capture him, but even if I enlisted the aid of Andraia or Elias, there was not room in this narrow tunnel for two people. There was nothing for it but to try and capture him myself. So I carefully wrapped my hand in a canvas bag, laid another bag out on the floor in readiness to put him in, and proceeded to crawl cautiously towards him. He rattled and stamped, and uttered shrill squeaks of warning. I manoeuvred into position and then suddenly grabbed him by his tail, as this seemed the least protected and most easily handled part of his body. I got it, and immediately he backed with full force on to my hand, and his spines ran straight through the canvas that I had wrapped round as protection, as though it was so much paper. It was extremely painful, but I hung on and dragged him towards me, for I felt that if I let go
I might not get another chance to grab him now that he knew my plan of attack. Slowly I wriggled backwards dragging the reluctant porcupine with me, until we were in the small room at the end of the first tunnel. Here there was slightly more room to move, and I tried to get the bag over the animal’s head, but he struggled madly, and backed into my chest, the spines going through my thin shirt and well into my flesh. The confined space was in his favour, for whichever way he turned he managed to dig a spine into the, while I had not room to evade his attentions. The only thing to do was to keep on crawling until I reached the open air. So I wriggled along backwards dragging the porcupine, and those last few feet seemed like miles. Just as we reached the open air he gave a terrific bound and a wriggle in an attempt to throw off my hand, but I hung on like grim death. I got shakily to my feet and kept the animal aloft so he could do no damage to me or himself. He hung there quite quietly; all the fight seemed to have gone out of him.
