06 African Adventure (16 page)

Joro looked helplessly about him. ‘I pledged,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I pledged to kill three men of my safari.’

‘And who were they?’

‘A father and two sons. Their name is Hunt.’

‘And have you fulfilled your promise?’

‘I tried. The three were with me in a canoe. There was a hippopotamus in the river and many crocodiles. The hippo attacked, and I held the canoe so that he would strike it, and the canoe was smashed, and I left the three at the mercy of the crocodiles. The father was nearly killed but the others saved him. Even now the father lies helpless between life and death. I could do no more.’

‘And was that all?’

‘No. I tried again. The elder son was in die catching-chair. A bull buffalo charged. I held the car in its place so that the buffalo would crush the man. The buffalo destroyed the chair - but the man was not in it. He escaped. He was too quick for me.’

‘Two failures,’ the witchdoctor said grimly. ‘Anything else?’

‘The younger son. I planned that a buffalo should kill him.’

Joro hesitated.

‘Go on,’ demanded the witchdoctor. ‘Did you carry out your plan?’

‘Instead, it was I who was nearly killed. It was the boy who prevented my death. If it had not been for him, I would not be standing before you now. He was very brave. He is but a boy, but he is a man. All three are good men. I cannot kill them. I beg you to relieve me from this pledge.’

‘That cannot be done,’ said the witchdoctor fiercely. ‘If you do not carry out your pledge you must die.’

The threat did not seem to frighten Joro. He lifted his head and looked back at the witchdoctor with an air of defiance.

‘Do with me as you will,’ he said. ‘Better one death than three.’

It will not be one death,’ replied the witchdoctor. ‘You have a wife and four children. If you do not fulfil your oath, all six of you will pay with your lives.’

Joro’s head sank again on his chest. He was a picture of sorrow and defeat. His companions watched him and waited. They were so still that they seemed scarcely to be breathing. The witchdoctor was also content to wait, a savage glint of victory in his eye. He knew he had won.

At last Joro spoke, but without lifting his head. His voice was low and very sad.

‘I will try again,’ he said.

‘Giraffes! ‘

Mali broke into the Hunt tent to make the announcement as it was just beginning to get light. Hal and Roger, with a hard day behind them, would have liked to sleep longer. But this was exciting news.

‘Where?’ Hal asked sleepily.

‘Just outside the camp. Five of them.’

John Hunt spoke. ‘Wish I could help you, boys. Nailing down a giraffe is a real job. Try to get two if you can - a male and a female. The Rio Zoo wants a pair.’

‘Will they pay enough to make it worth while for me to get up?’ grumbled Roger.

‘Would you get up for six thousand pounds?’

Roger’s eyes opened wide. He and his brother leaped out of bed and pulled on their clothes in such a hurry that Roger got his trousers on hind side before and Hal broke a bootlace.

One would have thought they were money mad. They were not - usually. But this kind of money was hardly to be made every day. In two minutes they were out of the tent.

There they were, only a few hundred yards from the camp, five handsome giraffes. Four were full grown, one was a baby. But what a baby! A giraffe on the day it is born is six feet tall.

They were all looking at the camp with the greatest curiosity. It is said that curiosity killed a cat. If curiosity kills, then all giraffes would have been dead long ago. There is no animal on earth more curious about things, more anxious to see what is going on.

Hal remembered the native story about the giraffe’s curiosity. In the beginning, God gave them normal necks but long legs. Their long legs raised them so high that they couldn’t see beneath the trees. So they tried to see over the tops of the trees. They stretched and stretched and stretched their necks, and the higher they stretched the better the view, and so they stretched some more. And now they stand twenty feet high and can look over the usual flat-topped acacia tree. And if they keep on getting taller some day they will be able to look straight into heaven, so say the tellers of tales.

In the early morning sun the golden hides looked very rich with their dark-brown spots.

‘What I want to know,’ Roger put in, ‘is how he ever pumps blood up that skyscraper neck.’

‘Just by having a big pump. His heart is forty times as big as yours. It weighs twenty-five pounds. He has the world’s highest blood-pressure. The jugular vein in Ms neck is nearly two inches across, and blood shoots up it like water through a fire-hose.’

‘But when he puts his head down to the ground, what then? All that pressure would blow his head off.’

‘No. He has a fancy set of valves that slow down the blood. Don’t worry. Nature has done a good job on him.’

A snort behind them made them look round. There was Colonel Bigg with his gun.

‘What do you kids know about the giraffe?’ he said sarcastically. ‘I’ll tell you about the giraffe. He’s the silliest thing on earth. Look at those long, skinny legs - what good are they? One crack with a cricket bat and they’d break like pipe stems. And that neck - you could tie a knot in it. Giraffes eat nothing but leaves. They can’t even growl. They’re not dangerous. Tell you what I’ll do.’ Colonel Bigg was feeling bigger every minute. His efforts so far to prove himself a great hunter had failed. Now he had his chance - he was sure he was more than a match for this flimsy, absurd imitation of an animal. He had heard that the giraffe is as timid as a mouse. ‘If you’re going to hunt ‘em, I’m going with you. I’ll show you how easy it is to tackle one of those walking telegraph poles.’ ‘If it’s so easy,’ Hal said, ‘you won’t need your gun. I’ll take it.’

Reluctantly, Bigg parted with the gun. He set his hat at a jaunty angle. He was very proud of that hat. It made him look like an honest-to-goodness professional hunter.

‘Who wants a gun?’ he growled. ‘AH I need is my bare hands and a bit of rope. Come on, lads, I’ll show you how it’s done in a real safari.’

The boys and Bigg, with plenty of black helpers, climbed into a Land-Rover and a Bedford lorry. The lorry was a big four-ton job and carried a cage especially intended for the tallest of all living animals. The sides of the cage were fifteen feet high, but there was no roof - the last five feet of the bean-pole beast could project upwards into space.

‘Run in on them fast,’ Bigg told Mali, who was driving. But Roger ventured to correct him. ‘No. Go easy. Don’t scare them.’ Mali could choose between these two contrary orders.

He evidently thought Roger’s idea more sensible, for he made the Land-Rover crawl as quietly as possible towards the inquisitive beasts. When he got within fifty feet of them and they began to show signs of nervousness, he stopped.

Now Roger could study them closely. Perhaps Bigg was right - they certainly looked very gentle and harmless. Their great brown eyes were as beautiful and tender as a girl’s. Their eyelashes were long and lovely and a glossy jet black.

‘Look as if they used mascara,’ Roger said.

They were the Baringo type, the so-called five-horned giraffe. And there were the five horns - but they certainly didn’t look dangerous. They were just stubby nubbins a few inches long and covered with hair. Roger asked Mali about the horns.

‘Just decoration,’ Mali said. ‘He doesn’t use them for fighting.’

‘He’s not a fighting animal,’ Bigg put in.

Mali smiled. ‘You’d be surprised. He uses his head -and not just for thinking. He strikes his enemy with the side of his head, not with his horns. And because his neck is so long he can give that head of his a terrific swing. I’ve seen one kill a leopard with a single swat’

‘A tall story,’ Bigg said scornfully. ‘They wouldn’t hurt a fly. See that one with his mouth open. Why, he has no upper front teeth.’

‘That’s right,’ Mali admitted. ‘But he has plenty of big grinders back where you can’t see them. Look at that one feeding on the thorn-tree. He has to have good teeth to grind up those thorns.’

‘And a tough tongue,’ Roger said, amazed to see a tongue a foot and a half long flick out and draw in the four-inch thorns where they could be crushed by the molars. Here again the giraffe was unusual. The whale had a longer tongue; but no land animal except the giant ant-eater could beat the giraffe.

‘Another thing about these silly animals,’ Bigg said with an air of superior knowledge. ‘They can’t make a sound.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Mali objected. ‘A lot of people think that - but it isn’t so. The giraffe can make a moo or a grunt.’

Bigg snorted. ‘A fine thing, that! An animal twenty feet tall and all he can do is moo or grunt! Even a jackal can make more noise than that.’

Mali turned and looked at Bigg gravely. ‘Perhaps the giraffe doesn’t need to make much noise. Animals are like people. Sometimes it’s the people who talk the most who do the least.’

Bigg glared at him. ‘I’ll ask you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Remember who you are, you black scum. And if you think I talk too much and don’t do anything, I’ll show you.’

He opened the door and slid out into the catcher’s seat. Roger was disappointed. He had hoped to do the catching himself.

‘Let’s go,’ cried the colonel.

‘Strap yourself in,’ Mali suggested.

‘Don’t need to. We won’t bump much. These creatures are as slow as molasses. Step on it. Go after that big one.’

Mali stepped on it. The bull giraffe cocked his head to one side and studied the car with his great brown eyes. Then he turned slowly and began lumbering away.

ft was a very awkward lumber. The front feet went forward together, then the back feet came forward together outside the front feet. It was a sleepy, slow-motion kind of gait. The creature moved like a lazy rocking-chair. Bigg laughed.

‘Clumsy fool! We’ll catch him in no time.’

Roger watched the speedometer. It touched ten, then climbed to twenty, went up to thirty, and the giraffe was still rocking along well ahead of the car. The colonel was bouncing like popcorn. Now he tried to strap himself in, but could not. \ ‘Hey!’ he cried, ‘Let up.’

But Roger nudged Mali, and Mali, with a grin, stepped a little harder. The speedometer showed forty miles an hour.

Now they were alongside the giraffe. He showed no signs of tiring. Every movement took him a good twenty feet. Bigg tried to unlimber his lariat, but he had to hold himself to his seat with both hands.

Suddenly a wall of heavy underbrush blocked the giraffe’s path. He found himself trapped. He tried to cross in front of the car to more open country on the other side. He didn’t quite make it. There was nothing for it but to leap over the car, and this he tried to do.

Bigg screamed with terror when he saw the great golden brown body soaring over him. He would never have believed a giraffe could look so enormous. He cringed in his chair, expecting to be mashed to a pulp.

The flying giraffe, more than twice as tall as the car, easily rose above it. But his leap was not quite long enough, and one foot came down on the roof.

It was a stout steel roof, and Bigg would never have thought it possible that one of those skinny, weak-looking legs could go through it. But what he had never realized was that this creature which looked so thin and frail actually weighed up to two tons.

When a foot with two tons of push behind it struck the roof, it went through like a knife through butter.

The colonel had left his precious hat on the seat beside Roger. The great hoof, a foot wide, was just the right size for that hat. It came down upon it squarely and turned it instantly into a brown pancake.

The foot had no sooner come down than it went up again, getting a few scratches from the torn metal, and the giraffe came to earth on the far side of the car and floated away.

Mali turned the car to follow him. The speed was forty and the ground was rougher than ever. Roger looked out and could see no colonel. He had bounced off.

Mali stopped the car and backed up. Bigg got unsteadily to his feet. He did not try to get back into the catcher’s chair.

‘Come, boy,’ he managed to say, ‘don’t expect me to do all the work. It’s your turn.’

Roger gleefully got out into the catcher’s chair and firmly strapped himself in. Bigg climbed into the cab and surveyed his pancaked hat with amazement.

If he had stopped to think it out, he would not have been so surprised. After all, this two-ton weight on his hat was equal to that of twenty-five men each weighing twelve stone. And twenty five men sitting on a hat would not be too good for the hat.

With many a leap and bounce the speeding car pursued the smoothly gliding giraffe.

But suddenly the big fellow veered off to avoid something that had been concealed in the long grass. That something turned out to be a pride of five lions. (A group of lions is called a pride - why, don’t ask me.)

The lions took off after the giraffe. Lions as well as humans find giraffe meat very tasty.

The lion is the one dangerous enemy of the giraffe. A single lion doesn’t dare attack - but a whole pride of lions rushing in at once may sometimes turn a giraffe into a good dinner.

The big bull giraffe was tiring. The lions streaking through the grass came up around him.

‘Now you’ll see,’ Bigg declared. ‘They’ll turn him into mincemeat in ten seconds.’

One lion leaped for the giraffe’s back, but it was too high a jump and he fell back sprawling on his rear end. Another leaped for the throat. The giraffe swung his sledge-hammer head and caught the air-borne lion in the stomach and sent him flying with all the wind and half the will knocked out of him.

Two attacked the front legs. Up went the great twelve-inch hooves and came down with a savage chopping effect that evidently caused severe internal injuries, for both the marauders slunk off, feeling very sick.

But it was the hind hooves of this magnificent, mild-mannered fighter that really took the cake. They flew out with such a powerful two-ton thrust that one lion died at once of a dislocated neck and another was knocked head over heels and lay on his back waving his feet in the air.