09 Lion Adventure

by Willard Price

  The balloon had now left the lake and was travelling over the valley floor. This was the famous Manyara game reserve, protected by towering cliffs, full of tropical vegetation, a paradise for wildlife.

  The scene changed suddenly. Now that the balloon had passed, the cloud of flamingoes settled down once more to the lake and the rocks that had been so warm and pink turned cold and grey. A blast of thunder came from the eastern sky. The boys looked back. A thundercloud as black as night was climbing above the horizon. White daggers of lightning stabbed through it.

  As if to answer the thunder, the Great Rift talked back with an earth-shaking roar, and landslides of great rocks dislodged from the cliffs by an earthquake crashed down into the valley.

  At the same time the god of the winds puffed out his cheeks and turned what had been a steady though strong wind into a violent, gusty gale that tossed the basket into

  the air and let it down with such a jolt as to break two of the eight lines attaching the basket to the ring.

  ‘Look what’s coming,’ Roger exclaimed. The western wall of the canyon was rushing towards them. Or so it seemed until you looked down and saw the woodland tearing by underneath.

  Roger picked up the trail rope, intending to throw it out and let it drag on the ground to slow down the mad rush of the Jules Verne.

  ‘Don’t,’ Hal warned. ‘We can’t go low enough to trail a rope. We’ve got to rise and go over that.’

  He nodded at the cliff ahead. The western wall of the canyon rose black and menacing before them. ‘We ought to climb to three thousand feet. Don’t know whether we can do it or not. Let’s chuck out some sand.’

  They began to throw out the bags. The supply of sand was getting dangerously low. Hal worried - but Roger hoped that the same thing that had happened at Kilimanjaro would happen again here. An up-current would carry them over the top. ‘We’ll get into the elevator pretty soon,’ he hoped.

  Hal was doubtful. ‘This isn’t that kind of a wind -strong and steady. It’s all snorts and sneezes. Hate to worry you, but I’m afraid we have a real cyclone building up. Cyclones have no respect for honest balloonists.’

  Roger displayed his knowledge of cyclones. ‘A cyclone has a steady wind. It goes round and round in a big circle.’

  ‘Which way?’ said Hal.

  ‘Clockwise south of the equator. Anti-clockwise north of the equator.’

  ‘And where are we now?’

  ‘Gee, I hadn’t thought of that. We’re on the equator.’

  ‘So,’ Hal said, ‘the wind doesn’t know which way to go. It just goes mad. It blasts off in all directions. That’s why cyclones are so much worse in the tropics than anywhere else. Keep throwing out sand.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Every last bag. It’s our only chance.’

  Out it all went. Hal hated to see it go, for it meant that from now on they had no means of raising the balloon. They could bring it down by letting out gas. But they could not make it go up. It was at the mercy of wind and sun. Wind might toss it up, sun heating the bag and expanding the hydrogen might carry it up, but any human power to lift it was gone.

  They had no time to dwell on these unhappy thoughts, for suddenly a sneeze of the wind god turned the basket completely upside down and the two balloonauts would have fallen to their death if they had not clung to the rim of the basket. As it was, they dangled dangerously over the savage rocks at the foot of the cliff, a thousand feet below.

  A wrench of wind reversed the basket and they climbed back in. Their faces were pale with shock.

  Neither said a word. There were no words strong enough.

  The sandbags had done their best and the balloon was rising. But the chance of clearing the top was very slim. There was a moment of hope when the wind turned to bite itself and carried them away from the cliff instead of towards it. The hope died when a whipping blast hurled the basket into the cliff with a crunching, crippling sound that made them fear there would be nothing of their magic carpet left.

  For a few breathless moments they stuck there as if plastered to the precipice.

  ‘We could let out some hydrogen and go down,’ Roger suggested.

  ‘And be ground up on those rocks? Besides, we have to think of the balloon”. It doesn’t belong to us. If there’s a chance to save it, we’ve got to do it.’

  The wind that had glued the Jules Verne to the cliff like a fly to flypaper now had a new and more devilish idea. It gusted in from the side and sent the balloon rolling like a ball along the face of the precipice.

  The basket whirled round and round, crashing at every turn into daggers of rock projecting from the cliff. The basket was being mashed into a mush of broken and tangled strands. The points of rock reached out to stab the passengers who hopped continually from one side of the basket to the other in an effort to avoid them. Two more of the ropes suspending the basket were sawed through by rocky knives. Now only four ropes held the basket to the ring above and the extra strain on them might snap them at any moment.

  Hal seized some extra rope and tried to repair the broken lines, but the whirling, bumping and bruising made the work almost impossible.

  ‘We’re in luck,’ Hal gasped.

  ‘What’s lucky about this?’ ,

  Hal looked up at the bag rolling along the jagged cliff. ‘Wonderful that it hasn’t been ripped open. That really would finish us off.’

  Roger, dizzy and sick from the whirling and bumping, tried to be grateful. He looked down a thousand feet to the rocks. Yes, it was better to be here than there.

  The whirling stopped. A back eddy of wind carried the balloon fifty feet out from the cliff. Then it was thrown in again at such speed that collision with the cliff would surely break the bag or the remaining basket ropes.

  It did not quite reach the cliff. A sudden up-blast carried it aloft, up and over the edge of the precipice, out of the diabolical Great Rift, and away at breakneck speed towards the west.

  Chapter 16

  Cyclone

  The black cloud had spread to swallow the whole sky. How different from the rosy world of half an hour ago.

  Lightning no longer flashed on the eastern horizon. It forked down from the churning clouds directly overhead. Every flash was followed in a split second by a deafening roar.

  ‘Too close for comfort,’ Hal said.

  Roger guessed his meaning. ‘The gas.’

  ‘Right. Hydrogen isn’t merely inflammable - it’s explosive. Just let one little jag of lightning burn a hole in that bag and there’d be nothing left of either the balloon or us.’

  ‘It wouldn’t really act as fast as all that, would it?’

  ‘Well, make a guess,’ suggested Hal. ‘What do you suppose is the temperature of burning hydrogen?’

  ‘How do I know? Perhaps boiling point; two hundred and twelve, Fahrenheit.’

  ‘Multiply that by twenty-five and you’ve got iC Hydrogen burns at more than five thousand degrees. One of the hottest flames known. You’ve seen men welding steel with a blowpipe or blowtorch. Chances are the gas was hydrogen. As soon as it gets out and combines with the oxygen in the air, it explodes. It makes a flame so hot it can cut metal as easily as a knife cuts cheese.’

  ‘Flash, crash!’ said the rolling black over their heads. Instinctively they hunched their shoulders as if to protect themselves from the descending danger.

  ‘If hydrogen is so awful,’ Roger said, ‘why do they use it in balloons?’

  ‘Because it’s the lightest of all elements. It lifts the balloon as nothing else could. Next best is helium - but it’s heavier and besides you’d have a lot of trouble finding it in Africa.’

  The sky was now so dark that the sudden bursts of light hurt the eyes. Roger couldn’t help ducking at every new explosion.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I can think of better things to do than to take a trip through a thunderstorm tied to a bomb.’

  Hal laughed. ‘Well, since we can’t do anything about it, le
t’s forget it. Help me fix these ropes.’

  ‘We have no more line.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to cut some pieces from the trail rope.’

  He took up the end of the rope. He examined it with interest. ‘I remember how this looked when we first got the balloon. The end was frayed out, unravelled. Now look at it.’

  The rope ended sharp and clean, not with any ragged tail.

  ‘Know what that means? That rope didn’t just come loose from the log. It was cut with a sharp knife.’

  Roger stared at the rope. ‘Who could have hated us that much?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ Hal said. ‘I can think of three possibilities. King Ku would plainly like to see us snuffed out, and all other white men at the same time - why, remains a mystery. Dugan wants our job and seems willing to stop at nothing to get it. And Basa - I thought we had made him our friend - but perhaps he’s still sore.’

  It was an unhappy feeling - three deadly enemies on the ground.

  But presently there was a fourth. Rain. Not a gentle little shower, but a torrent as if someone above had opened a fire hydrant. It came down from arctic heights. It was bitterly cold, and all the colder because of the cyclonic wind that whipped the boys’ wet bodies.

  That was bad enough - but the worst thing about it was that it chilled the gas which, contracting and growing heavier, caused the balloon to lose altitude.

  They must stay up to stay alive. If the Jules Verne were swept along the ground in the arms of the cyclone at seventy or eighty miles an hour, double the speed of a racehorse, anything it happened to strike would destroy it and its passengers. It was like a ship that must be kept well away from rocky coasts during a storm.

  A ship can do that, because it has an engine. The engineless balloon was at the mercy of the raging wind.

  They got a good idea of the force of the wind when they passed over an African hut just as the palm-leaf roof was lifted off and carried away as if it had been as light as a feather. They caught a fleeting glimpse of the astonished family looking up at their flying roof and trying to protect themselves against the drenching downpour which immediately put out their fire and would soon chill them to the bone.

  A great baobab tree struck by lightning blazed fiercely in spite of the rain. This did not make the flyers feel any more comfortable, knowing that they were tied to a bag of thirty thousand cubic feet of explosive gas.

  They were so low now that they were being whipped by the top branches of trees. New holes were torn in the sides and bottom of the basket. But suddenly the world dropped away from under them.

  They were over the great Ngorongoro Crater, nearly three thousand feet deep. The floor of this dead volcano covers a hundred and fifty square miles. Within the circle of its mighty wall, a hundred times as high as the Great Wall of China, the fairly level crater-bottom is the home of thousands of wild animals of every description.

  There were lakes and pools where hippos and crocodiles enjoyed themselves, and lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, giraffes, and buffaloes came to drink.

  The animals were revealed only when brilliant flashes of lightning illuminated the scene. In between these explosions of light, the black clouds and thundering rain cut off the view. They would have liked to go lower to see this wonderful pageant, but dared not since they must ride high enough to top the wall at the far side of the crater.

  The balloon slid over this rampart with only fifty feet to spare and raced on into the great Serengeti Desert. Here there were not only no towns or villages but not even a hut. Sand dunes like those of the Sahara crawled along, driven by the cyclone.

  One good thing - the rain was left behind. The sun blazed forth, blinding hot. A terrific sandstorm was in progress. It reached up to scratch the faces of the balloonmen. It blew sand into their eyes and ears, and mouths too if they dared open them.

  A gleam of white appeared below. ‘What’s that?’ said Roger.

  ‘A monument to Michael. He died here.’

  ‘Who was Michael?’

  ‘Michael Grzimek was a chap about my age who flew a plane over this desert, trying to make a count of the animals in the annual migration. This very balloon was also used on that same job. Michael and his father made thousands of flights in their small plane back and forth across this desert. Then one day when Michael was flying alone something made the plane crash. I’ll bet you can’t guess what’

  ‘A storm like this one?’

  ‘No, it was a perfectly clear, quiet day.’

  ‘Engine trouble?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘His plane collided with another?’

  ‘You’re closer to it. There was a collision, but not with another plane. It’s hard to believe that a bird could bring down a plane, but that’s what happened. A griffin-vulture collided with the right wing and bent it. That blocked the rudder cables and the plane dived and crashed. Michael’s body was dragged from under the wreckage. They buried him here and put up that monument. I remember what it says on the monument:

  MICHAEL GRZIMEK

  He gave all he possessed for the wild animals of Africa, including his life.

  Roger wondered if anybody would say something as nice on the monument to him and his brother. They also

  had done much for African wildlife. But he decided he’d rather stay alive than have something pretty said about him after he was dead.

  They finished repairing the basket ropes. The basket itself they could not repair. They simply avoided the holes that were big enough to fall through, and put as much of their weight as possible on the rim of the basket rather than on the weakened strands under their feet.

  ‘Know something?’ Roger said. ‘I’m hungry!’

  Hal looked up at the desert sun which poured down a merciless torrent of heat. ‘And I’m thirsty,’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t we think to have a supply of food and water on this thing?’

  ‘Because we never expected to make a trip in it. So long as it was moored in the camp we could easily get to the tent whenever we wanted to eat or drink.’

  ‘If we’d only had time to get our guns out of the car. Then, if we could land, we could shoot a gazelle or something and if we couldn’t cook it we could eat it raw and drink its blood.’

  ‘A lot of ifs,’ Hal remarked. ‘I think your brain is going iffy.’

  But he had to admit to himself that his own mind was getting jumpy under the strain of the last dozen hours.

  He saw things that weren’t there. On the horizon was a village and the villagers had seen the balloon and were coming to help. He knew it wasn’t true. There was no village, and no help. But there to the west was certainly a great sheet of water. It must be Lake Victoria. If they should drop into it they would have all the fresh water they could drink.

  The peculiar thing about it was that it floated high above the desert. It was a mirage, and he knew it. Lake Victoria did lie in that direction, but more than a hundred miles away.

  Chapter 17

  The whirling tower

  ‘I see a tower,’ Roger exclaimed. ‘Straight ahead. We’re going to strike it.’

  So the poor kid was seeing things too - things that weren’t there. ‘It’s real,’ Roger insisted.

  Hal rubbed the sand out of his eyes and looked. He saw it too. It was like a pillar in a cathedral, rising straight from the floor so high that the upper end of it was lost in space. Then he recognized it for what it was.

  ‘A twister,’ he said. ‘Remember?- we’ve seen them on the ocean. Only there they call it a waterspout. A climbing whirlwind that takes up water with it. Here in the desert it takes up sand. And it will take us up too if we get into it.’

  ‘A tornado?’ asked Roger.

  ‘I suppose that’s die name for it, except that a tornado usually covers more ground and is a bit less violent. You might call this a tight tornado. It goes up straight and fast like a bullet from a rifle instead of spreading like shot from a shotgun.’

  The scre
am of the whirlwind grew louder as they approached it. The white pillar was moving along the desert floor and there was a chance they might miss it.

  Oh for an engine or a rudder or some way of changing the course of this crazy balloon!

  The moving minaret gave them hope for a moment as it swung out of their path, but then a violent blast from the cyclone drove it back and in the next instant the Jules Verne was climbing towards the stars. It whirled sickeningly as it climbed. The needle of the altimeter slid around to its limit but still the balloon went up. The desert below could not be seen now through the sand that filled the air.

  ‘The higher we go the worse it will be coming down,’ Hal said.

  The ascent seemed slower now. And not so vertical. The pillar was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. The heat of the desert that had started the air on its spiral climb had died out in the cold upper reaches and presently the balloon fell out of the weakened column and began to fall.

  ‘Hang on,’ Hal shouted. ‘We’re in for a hard bump.’

  He knew this was stating it very mildly. The bump would not only be hard but perhaps fatal. He had no sand to throw out to delay the downward rush. The gas, chilled by the upper air, had lost much of its lifting power. The up-current of the twister was replaced by a strong down-current, on the principal that whatever goes up must come down.

  Since the basket would strike first they must get out of the basket. ‘Up into the rigging!’ Hal commanded. They clambered up the ropes to the ring.

  Now they could see the desert floor rushing up to meet them. Wasn’t there anything that could be done?

  Hal tried to remember something the warden had told him about just such a situation as this. It was a desperate measure. Hal resolved to try it.

  ‘I’m going to pull the rip line - let out all the gas.’

  ‘Are you off your head?’ screamed Roger.