08 Safari Adventure (7 page)

Roger put his hand in his pocket. ‘I have one Sleep left. How about putting him out of his misery?’

‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ said the warden. ‘And it might work if you didn’t have seven lions between you and the giraffe. Just how are you going to get round them?”I don’t need to. I can throw the dart from here.’ ‘The hide is too tough. The dart wouldn’t go in. You would have to jab it in by hand.’

Roger’s eye followed the giraffe’s neck up past the branch of an acacia tree.

‘Why didn’t I notice that before?’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s the way to do it.’

Before the warden could reply Roger was halfway to the trunk of the tree. To get there he must pass within ten feet of the lions. Most of them were much too interested in the giraffe to pay any attention to him. But one, a huge male, evidently the leader of the pride, wheeled about to face him, laid back his ears, bared his teeth, crouched as if to spring, and let out a blast of thunder that tied Roger’s nerves up in knots.

But he did not hesitate. He reached the tree and scrambled up. He could imagine the lion’s claws sinking into his tingling back. Or the beast would catch one of his feet in its bone-crushing jaws.

He reached the lowest branch and looked down. The lion was standing on his hind feet with his front paws on the tree-trunk, and the look on the huge face was anything but pleasant.

Roger inched his way out on to the branch until he was close to the giraffe’s head and neck. The great brown eyes with their remarkably long lashes looked at him appealingly.

He took the Sleep from his pocket and, with all his force, plunged the needle into the quivering neck.

He backed away from the thrashing head. He noticed a wire running down from the branch to the noose that held the little serval. Gently, he hauled the cat up out of the reach of the lions and planted its feet on the branch. He took out his cutters and snipped the noose.

Crosby watched anxiously. The excited cat might turn on the boy and scratch him badly. But the serval’s only idea was escape. It ran along the branch to the trunk, then up into the safe treetop.

Roger was happy to see that the lion had gone back with the others, waiting for dinner. He slid down the trunk and sprinted to join the warden.

‘That was a good job,’ Crosby said. They watched as the drug took effect. The great eyes closed, the twisting and squirming stopped. The last hour of the great animal would be without pain.

Roger noticed that in this case too the tail was gone.

‘To make a fly-whisk?’ he asked.

‘No. Some lady will wear the murder of that giraffe around her neck. They make necklaces out of giraffe tails.’

‘And is that all the poachers wanted?’

“That, and just one other thing. Look at the backs of the hind legs. The sinews have been torn out.’

‘What can they do with them?’

‘Weave them to make a bowstring.’

So for a necklace and a bowstring this magnificent animal must die. It was just too pitiful.

In the next snare hung the body of one of Africa’s loveliest creatures, the impala. Every visitor to Africa falls in love with the impala. It is a gazelle, the gayest of all the gazelles, so full of the joy of living that it cannot stay on the ground. It is a flier that does not need wings. It happily soars over bushes and small trees, touches the ground, then soars, and soars again. The vision of a hundred of these sleek, streamlined animals all in the air at the same time is a sight never to be forgotten.

But this impala would never sail again. The lovely creature was no longer lovely. A deadly wound had been cut in the neck by the wire snare. Parts of the body had been eaten away and maggots an inch long squirmed through the rotting flesh.

Roger could not bear to look at it. Heavy-hearted, he went on down the wall of death.

But the next animal was not dead - it was a Thomson’s gazelle, usually called a Tommy. The Tommy is a friend of man. He never seems to learn that it is not safe to trust man.

Beside the trapped animal was a smaller animal that had not been trapped. It was a baby Tommy that had refused to leave its mother. The mother was kicking out savagely at-some vultures that were tormenting the youngster. To-the last she was thinking, not of herself, but of her fawn. The vultures flew away as Roger and Crosby approached. Crosby stooped beside the fawn.

‘Too late,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’

Roger snipped the wire snare and the Tommy was free. But she did not run away. With her delicate little nose she nudged her baby to make him stand up, but she got no response. She herself tottered as if she might fall at any moment.

‘Do you think we can patch her up?’ said Roger.

‘We’ll take her to the hospital,’ the warden said.

‘Hospital?’

‘Haven’t you seen our animal hospital? We have a good many patients already but there may be room for a few more.’

Roger took the Tommy up in his arms. The slender little body weighed only some thirty pounds. Her blood soaked his bush jacket.

As he walked towards the trucks, she struggled fiercely, looking back at her fawn.

Crosby went back and took up what was left of the fawn. He carried it just ahead of Roger, and the mother Tommy was now satisfied and struggled no more. Her tired little head sank on Roger’s shoulder. Her heart that had been beating violently against his chest slowed down and then stopped. Tommy had gone to the Tommy paradise, if there is one. At least the friend of man was beyond the reach of unfriendly man and his cruel traps.

Roger took a shovel from the truck and dug a shallow grave for the gallant little gazelle and her fawn. Then he set out to rejoin the warden who had already gone back to the trap-line.

The ground suddenly gave way beneath him.

He was falling. He clutched at bushes and grass but he kept on falling. It seemed he would never stop.

But Roger did stop, with a hard jolt, as he landed on the bottom some twenty feet below the surface.

He scolded himself. ‘How stupid can you get?’ He had been told to watch out for elephant pits. Now he had walked straight into one.

It was very dark. At first he could see nothing. Gradually he could make out the details of his prison.

It was large enough for the biggest of elephants. The walls were straight up and down. The roof was of brush, criss-crossed, and sprinkled with earth so that it would look solid enough to fool an elephant - or a careless boy.

He bumped against something hard. He examined it. It seemed to be a wooden stake driven firmly into the ground and standing five or six feet high. His fingers ran up the length of it and came to a sharp point at the end.

A sticky something came off on his fingers. He looked at it, and then shivered. In the dim light he could see that the stuff was dark brown. It was Aco, the deadly poison the poachers used on the arrows.

He wiped his fingers on his trousers, hoping there were no scratches on his skin that would admit the poison to his system.

Now he could see that there were four such stakes in the centre of the pit. An elephant falling into the hole would be bound to land on them and they would mean his death. But before he died he would be in terrible pain. On so big a body the poison would not act quickly, so he might suffer for hours, even for days.

It was hard to believe that any men, even if they were poachers, could be so cruel. Most Africans were not brutal. He suspected that this pit of agony had been planned by the white man with the black beard.

Roger thought: Glad I’m not an elephant. I ‘d be on those stakes right now. Being considerably smaller than an elephant, he had fallen beside them, not on them.

A low snarl came from the darkest corner of the pit. Roger froze. It was bad enough to be in the pit alone -worse to be in it with the wrong kind of company. He thought of Daniel in the lions’ den. But he didn’t feel like a Daniel. He couldn’t make friends with a lion that must already be furious at finding itself caught in such a trap.

Roger almost wished the lion had landed on a stake.

But he repented of this thought immediately, for he wouldn’t want his worst enemy to suffer that kind of death.

The beast stirred in its corner, still growling. Roger could see it a little more clearly. It was no lion. It was something much worse.

It was smaller than a lion, but more dangerous. He could see spots on its coat. It must be a leopard, and leopards were far more irritable than lions. Roger backed into the corner farthest removed from the angry beast.

Still the animal growled or snarled, but it didn’t quite sound like a snarl or a growl. It reminded him of a cement mixer, or one of those chain saws the lumberjacks use in the Minnesota woods.

In fact it was very much like the purr of a house cat, only a hundred times as strong. As if puss were purring into a loud-speaker. Roger found it terrifying.

His uneasiness increased when he saw that the beast was coming towards him. Its big round golden eyes glowed as if they were lit from the inside. It didn’t crouch like a leopard. It stood so high from the ground that it seemed to be walking on stilts. It had a bristling moustache and the hair on the back of its neck and shoulders stood up straight like that of a dog or cat that is angry or afraid. Two black lines running from the eyes to the corners of the mouth made it look more savage.

Roger rubbed his eyes. Was it really there? He wondered if his nerves were still upset by his experience with the leopard the night before.

Now a little more light fell on the beast. It was real, but the craziest leopard he had ever seen. It was so high from the ground, and behind it, switching to and fro, was a bushy tail a yard long ending in three black rings and a white tuft of hair.

Those spots - they weren’t leopard’s spots. Instead of uneven rings with light centres, these spots were round and solid black. Suddenly he remembered he had seen pictures of this thing and had read about it. It was sometimes called a ‘hunting leopard’ - but it was no leopard. It was a cheetah.

The cheetah is a dog-cat. It is like a cat and like a dog and not quite like either. No dog, not even the Great Dane, has such long legs. No dog can run so fast.

In fact, nothing on four legs can beat it. The cheetah has been timed at seventy miles per hour. A Tommy gazelle can go thirty-seven, a Grant gazelle thirty-five, a zebra thirty, an ostrich twenty-nine, an elephant twenty-five, and a rhino has to stretch himself to do twenty. A cheetah quickly tires, but by that time he has caught what he is after.

And that buzz saw - it was really a purr. It was a purr to end all purrs. It made as much noise as a truck going uphill. But whether the truck-like purr was friendly or unfriendly, Roger still could not be sure.

The motor stopped and so did the cheetah. He cocked his head to one side and his blazing eyes seemed to look straight through the boy. Then an amazing sound came from his throat. You might have expected to hear the bark of a dog. But instead this was an ear-splitting ‘miaow’! It was followed by a few little bird-like chirps. To make them the cheetah puckered his lips as if about to whistle.

The dog-cat-bird seemed to be asking a question. Roger didn’t know how to answer. Should he yell at the top of his lungs to scare the beast away? Should he’ growl like an angry lion? The cheetah was probably afraid of elephants - should he scream like a charging elephant? He would have liked to run, but there was no place to run to. He had shrunk back into a corner of the pit as far as he could go and he had no weapon to defend himself if the animal attacked - except the wire cutters. But whoever heard of fighting a savage beast with wire cutters? Still, they might do a good deal of damage. If the cheetah made a lunge at him, he might perhaps snip off that black nose, or plunge the cutters into an eye. The eye and the nose of any animal were particularly sensitive.

But what a pity it would be to spoil that handsome, savage face! Those wonderful golden eyes with sweeping eyelashes as long as the giraffe’s, who could think of putting out for ever the light that shone in them?

Well then, there was only one thing left. Give the cheetah a polite answer to his question.

Roger tried to purr. It wasn’t much of a success. It sounded more like a gargle. Perhaps he would do better with a chirp. He puckered his lips, but all he got was a whistle instead of a chirp. He said, ‘Chirp, chirp,’ but that was a failure too - it didn’t sound a bit like the actual chirp of either a cheetah or a bird.

How about a miaow? It would have to be a super-miaow, as loud as the cheetah’s. He put all his lung power into it. It was truly a noble performance, as miaows go, but it only made the cheetah cock his head to the other side and look puzzled as if trying very hard to understand this crazy two-legged creature.

Roger gave up the cheetah language and decided to try his own. He spoke in a low tone as he would to a pussycat.

‘Here puss, here puss,’ he said softly with a smile in his voice. ‘Nice kitty, pretty kitty. Or if you prefer to be a dog, come Fido, here Fido.’

The tone of his voice did the trick. With one bound, the cheetah reached him, jumped up on him like a dog, punched his fore-paws into his chest and jammed him tightly back into the corner. The super-dog’s head towered above his own and the open jaws with their great jagged teeth were within an inch of his forehead. His lungs were pushed in by the animal’s weight. He gasped for breath,

His arms were free and he could have punched the beast or struggled to get away. Something told him that it was better to stand still and let Nature take its course. He had to admit to himself that he was terrified. The hair stood up on his neck as it had on the cheetah’s. Prickles ran down his backbone.

Two gold lamps were peering through his head like X-rays. The beast lowered its head and opened its jaws wide. Roger had never looked anybody or anything in the teeth at such close range. It seemed to him those canines were as big as a hippo’s. They appeared to be about to do to him what he had thought of doing to the cheetah - bite off his nose. The animal’s hot breath flooded his face.