‘Because most of it is on the ground,’ Hal said.
In the dust of the road lay nine feet of snake, easily supporting the erect six feet.
‘What is it?’
‘A mamba. The Africans call it The Snake that Walks on Its Tail. Wish we could get it. Isn’t it a beauty?’
The mamba was grass-green and its scales sparkled like jewels. But Roger was a little too uneasy to appreciate its beauty.
He had heard too many grim stories about the mamba. It was famous for its bad temper. If you approached it slowly, it would glide away. But if you startled it, as this one had been startled by the sudden arrival of the car, it would attack.
It could strike hard enough to knock a man down. It had been known to chase and kill a man on horseback. It had a bad record for attacking people in cars. If cut in half, the front half could still attack.
‘It’s mighty poisonous, isn’t it?’
‘Nothing more deadly in Africa. You can actually drink its poison without harm. But if it gets into your veins it paralyses the respiratory system and you quit breathing.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Just wait a minute and see if it quiets down. Then I’ll try to get it.’ They waited. The cobra-like hood grew smaller and the stiff body relaxed.
‘We’ll have to act quickly or it’ll be gone. There’s a bag in the rear of the truck. Do you think you could sneak around very quietly and get it?’
The errand did not appeal to Roger, But he cautiously opened the door. Unfortunately his nervous hand struck the handle and at the sound the snake became rigid. Then it was suddenly on the car itself where it struck the windscreen a terrific blow that cracked the glass and left it dripping with poison.
‘Hope it didn’t hurt its nose doing that,’ Hal said.
Roger looked at Hal curiously. This was a funny brother of his who thought more about keeping a specimen in perfect condition than about the danger of getting bitten.
The snake seemed a little discouraged. It had expected to bury its fangs in flesh and blood and all it got was a whack
on the nose.
‘Now, while it’s still dizzy, get that bag.’
Roger slipped out and returned at once with the sack. He closed the door carefully, but didn’t bother with the window which was open only a crack - certainly not enough to admit a large snake.
But the mamba, exploring the window, found the crack and made use of it. This snake has the peculiar ability to flatten itself so that it may pass through a space no thicker than a sandwich.
The swiftly moving snake was well started through the crack before the boys realized what it was up to.
Too late to do anything about it,’ Hal said. ‘Keep perfectly quiet. Don’t move an inch. Perhaps that bump knocked all the zing out of it and now all it wants is a dark hole to crawl into.’
‘Suppose you’re wrong,’ said Roger. ‘Do we have any serum in the car?’
‘None.’
‘If it bites, will there still be time to get to camp?’
‘No. You’d be dead in ten minutes. Now shut up and don’t move.’
The snake glided smoothly over Roger’s back, giving him a prickly sensation he would never forget. He could hardly refrain from throwing it off or at least letting out a good scream, but he kept himself bottled up tightly as it passed along the back of the seat to Hal. It chose to slide over Hal’s neck and then down into the sack which Hal had left invitingly open to receive it.
Hal did not breathe until all of the fifteen-foot serpent was inside the bag and well settled. Then, moving very slowly, he gave the lover of darkness a complete blackout by closing the bag and tying it shut. Now the snake was at peace. But the same could not be said for the nerves of the two animal collectors.
As they drove on towards camp their jumpy heartbeats slowed down and their spirits rose.
‘Pretty good morning’s work,’ Hal said. ‘One of Africa’s most famous snakes in the bag - and Nero put away where he can do no more harm. Perhaps the gorillas can live in peace now, and so can we.’
This pleasant pipe-dream was rudely shattered when they arrived at camp and Joro came running with some bad news.
There’s been another killing,’ he said. ‘Twenty more gorillas dead. Nero has been at it again.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Hal said. ‘You know yourself that Nero was double-locked in a cage all last night, and now he’s in jail.’
Joro shook his head. ‘Then it is witchcraft.’
‘Joro, you know better than that. You’re too intelligent to believe in witchcraft.’
‘I don’t know,’ Joro said. ‘Perhaps there is no witchcraft in your country, but this is Africa.’
‘Africa or anywhere else, there’s a natural reason for everything. And I’m going to find out what it was this time. Where did this happen?’
‘About one hour’s walk down the elephant trail that leads to the valley.’
‘After lunch 111 go and take a look.’
‘I’ll go with you,’ Roger said.
‘No, you’d better stay here and look after the animals. See that the mamba is put in a good cage. Don’t let him get his fangs into you.’
After a hasty lunch, Hal set off down the trail by which the valley elephants often came at dusk to drink at the lake.
Occasionally he passed an elephant pit. These pits had been dug by Africans and were now neglected, but when new they had been covered with leafy branches through which the unsuspecting elephant would fall and remain trapped until men came to kill him and carve him up to feed the villagers.
The pits were now old and uncovered and the beasts had picked their way around them. Hal did the same.
After walking for about an hour he began to look for the twenty dead gorillas. He found them at last in a small cleared space under a giant hagenia.
Hal could not understand what he saw. He was almost inclined to agree with the believers in witchcraft. There was no sign that human beings had been here - no human footprints, no broken spears or arrowheads.
Many of the bodies were torn and looked as if they had been partly eaten. He knew that Africans sometimes do kill gorillas for their meat. But they would not have left so much behind them. They would have taken the carcasses to their villages to devour later.
There were many dead babies. That was strange. Gangsters usually killed the adults and took away the babies alive to sell to animal collectors. Here both old and young had been slaughtered.
All the adults were females. The males, if any, must have been absent on a food-hunting quest. That had made things easier for the mysterious killer, female gorillas seldom fight. When attacked, they sit doubled over with hands protecting their heads.
Blood dripping through the leaves of the hagenia made him look up. In the branches more than a hundred feet from the ground dangled the bodies of two large gorillas. How did they get up there? Young gorillas climb trees, but adults, because of their weight,.prefer to stay on the ground.
Could the two large apes have been taken aloft after they were dead? African hunters would have no reason for doing that. Not if they were human hunters. The only animal hunter that could do it and would do it was the leopard. This cat would climb a tree with a carcass twice its own weight and hang it high to ripen and tenderize before he eats it. Thus he keeps it safe from the hyenas and jackals which never climb trees.
Hal had an uneasy feeling that someone was watching him. He pivoted on his heels, scanning every bush in the circle.
There it was, just partly visible, a black face and two deep-set eyes. As he looked, it vanished.
It seemed to him that it had been too big a face to be the face of an African. Then what - the face of a gorilla - his sworn enemy, Gog?
Had Gog done all this? He could not believe it. Men killed men, but gorillas do not kill gorillas.
Still puzzled and distressed he started back towards camp. Black clouds covered the sky and a heavy pall of
smoke from the volcano did not improve the visibility. It was only mid-afternoon but it seemed almost night under the heavy canopy of trees. An occasional flash of lightning lit the path, but blinded the eyes so that the shadows seemed darker than before.
He kept in mind that there were elephant pits along this trail. Fortunately they had lost their cover of brush, so it should be easy, even in this dim light, to see them and go around them. So he confidently trotted along the path and was astonished when what appeared to be a bed of leaves gave way under his feet and he dropped into an elephant-sized hole.
He landed with a rude jolt but decided that he was not really hurt. He was greatly puzzled. If this pit had been concealed when he came from camp he would have fallen into it It must have been open then and he had seen it and avoided it. It had since been covered. By whom? Had someone planned to trap him?
Whoever it was, he would fool him. With a good strong set of arms and legs, he should be able to climb out of this spot without difficulty.
But when he tried it he found that the walls were steep and offered no handhold. Besides, the pit was about twenty
feet deep - as deep as a two-storey building is high. To try to clamber out would be like trying to climb the outside wall of a building without the help of a fire-escape or even a drainpipe.
But there was another way. Dangling from above was a stout vine or liana of the sort used by the Africans as rope.
He laid hold of it and began to climb hand over hand.
He had not made five feet when the vine came loose from the brush above and both vine and boy tumbled to the bottom of the pit.
Still he did not worry. It might be a long wait, but sooner or later someone would come looking for him. Joro knew what path he had taken. He would just sit down and take it easy - and hope that no elephant would be fooled as he had been and drop in on him. He moved over into a corner so that he would be less likely to get mashed if this should happen.
He dozed, in spite of flashes of lightning followed at once by thunder. But what really roused him was a sound like that of a saw going through a hardwood knot. He recognized at once the scream of a leopard.
It came again, but this time at the very edge of the pit.
He strained his eyes to see what was going on. Two dark figures seemed to be engaged in a wrestling match. One of them, he could tell by the screams, was a leopard. The other was completely silent and appeared to be trying to push the leopard over the edge.
It took a good bit of trying. The leopard seemed to be about half the size of its opponent. But the leopard is rated as the strongest animal of its size in Africa. What other animal can climb a tree with a carcass twice its own weight in its teeth?
But this time the leopard had met its match. With an ear-splitting shriek it fell into the pit.
The figure above turned away. ‘Hey, you up there - help me get out of here,’ Hal shouted.
He got no answer. The mysterious stranger was going. Perhaps he didn’t understand English. Hal tried to say it in Swahili. Didn’t the fellow have ears? Yet he calmly walked away and left Hal to deal with a very unpleasant companion.
Chapter 19
Man against cat
Daniel in the lions’ den was much safer than Hal in the company of an angry leopard.
As every visitor to animal Africa knows, you may come within fifteen feet of a lion or a whole pride of lions and suffer no harm - as long as you carry no gun and behave yourself. But you take your life is your hands if you come that close to a leopard.
The Hon is a social animal. The leopard is a loner. During an African safari you will see hundreds of lions at close range. You may come away from Africa without having seen a single leopard. It is there and it has seen you, but it doesn’t care for your company.
Particularly dangerous is a leopard trapped in a small space with a human. And this one was already infuriated by its fight with the dark Someone or Something.
Being a night animal, its senses of sight and smell were superhuman. It saw, smelt and hated, and for it to hate was to act. Like a flash of lightning, it charged. Hal found himself trying to stave off a raging, biting, clawing devil. No wonder this creature was called the hellcat.
By instinct it went straight for the eyes. If these could be scratched out, the rest would be easy.
Hal dodged, and the beast crashed into the corner. This did not improve its temper. It turned with a sawing scream and sank its claws into and through Hal’s bush jacket. Hal tried to twist out of the way, but this snake on four legs could out-twist any man. It seemed to coil around him like a python while its jaws groped for his throat. Its own throat was now in Hal’s powerful grip and was being squeezed so tightly that it could hardly breathe.
By a violent contortion it pulled itself free. But Hal was moving at the same instant and managed to turn the cat on its back. He got his knees on its lungs. His elbows planted in its armpits spread its front legs apart so that he could not be torn by its claws.
But he was not paying proper attention to his hands. By a swift lunge the leopard caught his right between its jaws. Hal’s efforts to pull it away were in vain.
Then Hal remembered. Carl Akeley, the man who lay buried near the cabin, had once been in the same predicament. Unable to pull his hand free, he had turned the tables upon his opponent by doing what the leopard least expected. The leopard was used to hanging on to a limb that tried to free itself. But suppose the arm or leg between its jaws went in the opposite direction.
Every time the teeth relaxed their hold for a moment, Akeley, instead of trying to jerk his hand free, actually forced it farther into the animal’s throat. So he actually choked it to death.
Hal followed the example of the master. Each time the teeth eased up on his hand he drove his fist deeper. At the same time his left hand bore down heavily on the animal’s throat. His knees forced the air out of the beast’s lungs.
But how long could he keep this up? Black patches were flickering across his eyes and he felt sick. He was weakening fast.
It seemed for ever. Did this cat, like others, have nine lives? How long could it fight without air? The right fist and the left hand completely cut off its wind, yet it struggled.
A flash from the sky gave light for an instant, and Hal could not believe what he saw. Or rather what he did not see. He seemed to be fighting nothing but a black shadow. He could almost believe that the whole thing was only a product of his crazed imagination.
The flash should have revealed a writhing creature in black and yellow. No animal’s coat is more conspicuous -yet Hal had seen nothing.
Then it was that it occurred to him that he must take the animal alive. For here was no ordinary leopard. This was the very rare all-black leopard sometimes called a panther that every zoo wanted but few ever got.
Akeley had kept up the suffocation technique until the beast died. To take it alive would be more difficult. Hal dared not leave off too soon, and he must not keep it up too long. Just how much was enough? Not being accustomed to choking animals, he had no experience to go by.
The animal stopped struggling and became limp. Its jaws relaxed. The lungs under Hal’s knees stopped pumping. Would the animal promptly revive if allowed to breathe?
Hal withdrew a bleeding arm and fist and relieved the weight on the leopard’s chest. He waited a moment, ready to repeat the choking process, but there was no movement. For all he knew, his prize might be dead.
Where was that liana? He fished about for it, found it, tied the rear feet, tied the front feet, then tied all four together.
He waited anxiously for signs of life. He felt for the heart - it was still beating, but slowly, as if it could not make up its mind whether to recover or quit.
His hand over the animal’s nose detected a slight movement of air. Now Hal was sure. He could have sung and danced - if he had, not been so frightfully tired.
The leopard sawed faintly. It began a snake-like squirming. Soon it was thrashing about violently
and Hal thought it best to retreat to the other side of the pit. There he collapsed and, thinking he must remain awake until help came, he promptly went to sleep,
He was roused by his brother’s voice and the glare of flashlights.
‘What are you doing down there?’ Roger demanded.
‘Just putting in time,’ Hal said. ‘Got a rope?’
A rope end was lowered to him. He noosed it around the leopard’s feet. ‘Haul away.’
The men hauled, and were surprised to find at the end of the line not the man they had expected but a sprawling, spitting, growling black leopard.
Again they let down the rope. Hal ordinarily would have swarmed up it like a sailor. Now he had hardly enough energy to make a loop for his foot and hang on while he was hoisted like a bale of hay. He dropped in a heap on the grass.
‘Ill be ready to walk in a few minutes.’
‘Walk nothing,’ Roger said. ‘Anybody who can take on a panther single-handed deserves to ride.’
So Hal and the leopard got equal honours. The leopard was borne on a pole thrust between its legs, and Hal lay on a hastily-made bamboo litter.
Arriving at the cabin, Hal was immediately laid out on his bed where Roger and Joro carefully washed out his wounds, pumped them full of antiseptic, and applied bandages.
Then Roger went out to see to the unbinding and caging of tile leopard. The men marvelled over the trophy. Most of them had never before seen a black leopard.
‘It must be pretty rare,’ Roger said upon returning to Hal’s bedside. ‘What’s it worth?’
‘Five times as much as the yellow-and-black.’
‘Aren’t you exaggerating?’
‘Not a bit. Almost everybody has seen the spotted leopard, or pictures of it. But here’s a novelty - like our white python. Or a white tiger.’
‘Is there such a thing as a white tiger?’
‘Crandon Park Zoo in Miami has a yellow-and-black tiger and white tiger. The first is valued at twelve hundred dollars and the white carries a price of thirty-five thousand dollars - just because everybody is familiar with the regular but not one person in perhaps a million has ever laid eyes on a white.’
10 Gorilla Adventure Page 10
