06 African Adventure (5 page)

‘You will at least have a cup of coffee,’ he suggested, and led the way to the table.

Bigg had little to say as he put away six eggs, eight rashers of bacon, ten helpings of hot breads with butter and honey, and five cups of coffee. Hunt, realizing that his guest was really hungry, had the cook broil a large antelope steak. Bigg made short work of it. Then, after a few more cups of coffee, his self-importance showed signs of coming back.

‘By the way,’ he said, looking about, ‘Who is your White Hunter?’

‘We have none,’ Hunt said.

‘What? No White Hunter? You are in a bad way. Where do you come from?’

‘New York.’

Ah, thought Bigg, another innocent New Yorker. Bigg had fooled one New Yorker - at least for a week - perhaps he could do better with this one.

‘A city man,’ said Bigg. ‘The streets of New York are hardly the place to learn about big game, are they now?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘So you know nothing about hunting?’

Hunt smiled. ‘A little.’ He did not think it necessary to explain that he was not just a city man. He had a house in the city but spent most of his time at his animal farm in the country. There the wild animals gathered in Africa, India, and South America were held until they were bought by zoos, circuses, or carnivals. And he did not think it necessary to say that after many safaris in Africa he knew more about big game than most White Hunters. He could not only shoot animals, he could take them alive, which is much more difficult.

And his sons were also good hunters. In the Amazon jungle, under his direction, they had taken alive many strange creatures, including the giant ant-eater, the tapir, the anaconda (largest of all the world’s snakes), and the jaguar. In Pacific waters they had captured the great sea-bat, the giant squid, and the octopus, and had gone deep into the sea in search of pearls and the treasure of sunken ships.

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ said Bigg grandly. ‘You need me, that’s plain, and I won’t fail you. It’s lucky that I just happen to be free. I’ll guide you, and it will cost you very little - let us say only three hundred pounds a week. But mind you, I can’t do it for long, I have too many other important engagements coming up.’

‘No thank you,’ Hunt said. ‘I wouldn’t think of taking up your valuable time. I hope you have a safe trip back to Nairobi.’

Panic seized Bigg. He dare not go out again into that wilderness full of ferocious animals. If they did not get him and give him a quick death, he would die slowly of starvation and the vultures would pick his bones. As for Nairobi, he had not the faintest notion whether it was north, south, east, or west. Somehow he must manage to stay under the protection of this safari.

Hunt saw the anxiety in his visitor’s eyes. His heart melted. Hunt was naturally kind to animals, and no less kind to the human animal. He had no liking for this big bluffer, but he could hardly turn him out at the mercy of the risks of jungle and plain.

‘We don’t need a White Hunter,’ he said. ‘But if you’d like to remain with us as a guest until we get out of the game country, we’d be happy to have you.’

Bigg felt as if a great load had been taken from his shoulders, but he was careful to conceal his relief.

He pursed his lips and nodded slowly, as if giving the matter great thought. ‘I’m a pretty busy man,’ he said. ‘Still, I can’t desert you, after seeing the trouble you are in.’ He waved his hand airily. ‘Forget the fee. I’ll stay with you a few days at least if by doing so I can render you a service.’

The best service you can give us, thought Hunt, is to keep out of our way. Aloud he said:

‘Make yourself at home. I’ll get the boys to put up a tent for you.’

The largest lawn-mower Roger had ever seen was cutting the grass.

Just outside the camp, a huge mouth as broad as a door, backed up by a body as big as a safari tent, moved along, the great jaws champing the grass clear down to the roots and leaving a bare path four feet wide.

‘Crazy!’ said Roger, hardly believing his eyes.

At the sound, the monster stopped chewing, raised his head and looked at Roger with huge goggle eyes that seemed to stick out like glass balls from his flat face.

He took a step towards Roger, then stopped as if to think. This queer, two-legged thing was not doing him any harm, so why should he bother with it? He did not fear it He could take it at one bite. But it was not his idea of good food. He liked grass better.

‘Look!’ Roger had found his tongue at last. Hal and his father turned. The hippo’s ears went up, and his eyes seemed to reach out a little farther.

‘Steady,’ said Hunt. ‘He’s not likely to charge unless we give him cause.’

‘He has plenty of room for it,’ his father said. ‘His stomach is eleven feet long - almost as long as he is. I’d say he measures about fourteen feet over all.’

‘How much does he weigh?’

‘Probably between three and four tons.’

‘See him yawn!’ cried Roger.

The hippo, perhaps to show his indifference to these creatures, or because he was still quite sleepy, opened his jaws in an enormous yawn. He revealed a great pink cavern four feet wide and four feet deep. Roger could have stepped inside it - but he had no intention of doing so. The yawn was edged with immense teeth. Most of them were grinders, but those in front were canines three feet long.

‘Lots of elephants don’t have bigger tusks than that,’ marvelled Roger. ‘Are they as dangerous as they look?’

‘They will go through metal. And these tusks are hot unusually large. I’ve seen them four feet long. The upper teeth grind against the lower and that keeps them worn down. But if an upper canine breaks off, the lower has nothing to stop it from growing. The greatest length of a hippo tusk ever recorded was five feet four inches.’

‘Are they any good - those teeth?’

They’re extremely hard, harder than elephant’s ivory. For many years they were used to make false human teeth. I suppose a lot of sportsmen who have come over here hunting hippos didn’t realize that they had hippo teeth in their own heads.’

‘Do museums want hippo heads?’

‘They do. That head would bring seven hundred pounds. But we can do about four times as well as that if we deliver a live hippo instead of a dead head. I think the Hamburg Zoo would like this baby.’

‘Baby!’ exclaimed Hal.

‘Yes. He’s not full grown. He’s still young enough to get used to a zoo and not be homesick for Africa.’

The hippo was still yawning. ‘I never saw such a long yawn,’ Roger said.

His father agreed. ‘Yes, he’s the world’s biggest yawner. Sometimes when he comes up out of the water and yawns, he throws his head back so far that he topples over backwards. But his yawn can be very useful. When he lies at the bottom of the river he points his head upstream and holds his big mouth open, and sooner or later some fish that are being carried down by the current will find themselves going down his throat.’

The great thick lips were rosy red. ‘Wonder what kind of lipstick he uses,’ Roger remarked. ‘It would take just about a quart for each lip. He must like red. He has it all over him!’

The whole great black hulk was covered with a reddish moisture. ‘Naturalists used to say that the hippo sweats blood,’ said Hunt ‘But it’s just a red perspiration. The hippo doesn’t like the heat. That’s why he likes to spend most of his time under water. He easily gets sunburned. If he is out in the sun very much he has to use skin lotion. The skin lotion he prefers is mud. You wouldn’t think a hide two inches thick would get sunburned - but look at those big cracks in the back of his neck. He’ll fill them with mud when he gets to the river. Once I caught a young female hippo mat was suffering so badly from sunburn that we had to give her an injection of forty cc’s of penicillin. Then we dug a good mud-hole for her to wallow in, and within a week she was all right.’

Eight white tick-birds sat on the monster’s back and went about picking at the hide. They paid special attention to the wrinkles, in which they could usually be sure of finding ticks or other biting and burrowing insects. The hippo never shook off the birds. Even when one flew into his mouth after a flitting insect, caught it, and settled down on a great tooth to enjoy it at leisure, the hippo did not clamp his jaws shut to punish the impertinent bird.

The tick-birds are the hippo’s best friends,’ said Hunt.

When the bird had flown away, the great red cave slowly closed and the mammoth beast again looked suspiciously at the three humans. He snorted, tossed his head, and waggled his great rear.

‘Just trying to scare us,’ said Hunt.

‘He couldn’t catch us anyhow,’ said Roger. ‘He’s too big and fat and heavy. I could run twice as fast.’

‘That’s what you think,’ Hunt said. ‘In spite of his weight, he can gallop as fast as a horse. Besides, bushes that would stop you cold would mean nothing to him. He’d go through them like a bulldozer. Never try to race a hippo.’

The hippo had returned to his job of eating a path and was beginning to move off.

Hal turned to his father. ‘How are we going to catch him?’

‘To catch him I’d need your help.’ He looked at the bandages that covered the ant-jaws holding together the cut on Hal’s arm. ‘And today I think you’d better just rest.’

‘Rest, nothing! The arm is O.K. Doesn’t hurt a bit. Let’s go after that fellow.’

Seeing that his son was determined, Hunt said, ‘Very well - but don’t be in a hurry.’

‘If we don’t hurry he’ll be gone.’

‘If you do hurry you’ll be a goner. He’s making for the river. If there’s one thing a hippo can’t stand, it’s anything that gets between him and water. Then he goes wild. He can be as savage as a lion and an elephant rolled into one. Don’t forget - hippo means horse and potamus means river. The ‘river horse’ loves water, can’t bear being shut off from it. Let him get to the river. We’ll follow him with the catching trucks and try to haul him out into a cage.’

The plan was perfect, except for one thing. The three Hunts had forgotten about their guest, Colonel Bigg.

The colonel had gone on a little walk down to the river. For a while the grass was only two or three feet high. As he got down into the lower land, where there was more moisture, the elephant grass grew to a height of fifteen feet. Elephant grass is really a grass, though it looks more like a reed or cane. It is very tough, and has sharp edges. If you brush your way through it, you are sure to be badly scratched. Often it grows so thick that it is impossible to get through - impossible for a man, but the powerful hippo barges through, making a path that other hippos follow. When many have gone that way, the path is quite smooth and clear, with a wall of elephant grass rising on each side and bending to meet overhead, forming a tunnel.

The ‘hippo tunnel’ is used not only by the hippos but by many other animals, and man as well.

But when a hippo is passing through the tunnel towards the river, anything that gets in his way is out of luck. The hippo does not change his mind easily. When he is set upon getting to water, he will plunge straight ahead with open jaws and tackle even a rhino or an elephant that blocks his way. And as for a mere man-size creature, such as Colonel Bigg, that would not stop a water-loving river horse for one moment.

The colonel, enjoying the cool morning air and the shade beneath the canopy of grass that closed over his head, was returning from the river. He was thinking about lunch, although he was still full of breakfast. He was reflecting upon what an easy life he had fallen into, thanks to these suckers who had let him join their camp.

There was a rustling ahead, but he paid no attention to it. He walked along with his eyes on the ground. The rustling increased, and he looked up. Two huge bulging eyes stared into his own. Behind them was a great black mass that completely filled the tunnel from wall to wall.

The hippo stopped and so did the man. The animal opened its mighty red mouth full of flashing swords and let out a terrific bellow, a grinding, gritty roar that sounded like the dumping of a load of gravel.

The colonel fired from the hip and, of course, missed. The target wasn’t quite big enough for him. The sound further enraged the beast. It came forward at a fast trot, and the colonel promptly turned tail and ran.

He was not worrying too much. Surely he could run

faster than this clumsy lubber. This great awkward hulk of fat would never catch him.

A blast of hot air from the big mouth behind him warmed the back of his neck. He dropped his rifle and speeded up. But he could not escape those terrific puffs of hot air. They were like the spurts from a jet engine. One blew off his hat. The beast snorted as if with savage pleasure, and the colonel could feel a great lip, or it could be a tusk, nuzzling against his shoulder.

He stumbled and fell flat. Now the living steam-roller would go over him. He would be crushed into the ground by the thousands of pounds of angry fat.

Instead, he felt himself seized by the bush-jacket and tossed up through the grass roof, sprawling through the air, then scratching down through sharp-edged elephant grass to lie at last, gasping and itching, in what seemed like a bed full of razor-blades. He heard the steam-roller thunder by, then splash as it plunged into the river.

Bigg crawled out of his uncomfortable nest into the hippo tunnel. Bloody grass-scratches streaked his face and hands. He was sure all his bones were broken. He felt himself all over and could find nothing wrong except that there were large holes in the back of his jacket, punched by the brute’s teeth.

He staggered up through the tunnel, found his gun, and picked it up. Then he heard voices and saw John Hunt and Hal coming from the camp. Bigg pulled himself together.

‘What’s up?’ said Hunt. ‘We heard a shot’

‘Yes,’ said Bigg, trying to collect his thoughts. It never occurred to him to tell just what happened. True to his nature, he must make a big story of it.

‘How did you get bloodied up?’ Hal wanted to know.

‘Hippo,’ said Bigg. ‘I met him in the tunnel. We had a fight to the finish. But I got the best of him.’