by Bear Grylls
They were both starting to climb, aiming for the thick, camouflaging foliage higher up the tree . . . Then they froze where they were as the man burst out into the clearing.
He gave an expression of disgust as he looked around and saw them gone. He raised both hands and let them fall back down by his sides. Then he stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the scene more thoughtfully. Next he started to pace slowly around the edge of the clearing.
Fortunately he was heading in the wrong direction. Beck began to relax as the man peered carefully under bushes and up trees. But after about ten metres, he stopped. Beck wondered if the Silverback could hear his pounding heart: he turned slowly and began to retrace his steps.
After only a couple of moments he looked up in their direction – directly at their tree. He put his head to one side, then began to walk forward again, and Beck knew they had been seen.
‘Nice try, kid.’ The Silverback strode purposefully to the base of their tree. ‘Are you and your lady friend coming down, or do I have to come up?’
‘Try it,’ Beck muttered. He looked around for a branch he could snap off and use as a weapon.
‘I’ve got all night and all day. I’ve also got food and water. How long are you going to last up there?’
Beck looked at Samora. He knew the man was right. They were in no state to survive up a tree for any length of time.
He was also pretty sure that if Lumos had now finally got their hands on him, then the game was over. And they wouldn’t spare Samora either: she knew the whole story, and besides, Lumos had never shown any sign of caring about innocent bystanders.
But as long as they remained up in the tree, they would stay alive. That was good enough for now.
Of course, if the Silverback had a gun, then he could simply pick them off, and that would be that. But he didn’t seem to be armed. This struck Beck as curious, not to mention careless, but he wasn’t going to complain. It was the one ray of light in their situation.
If he had a gun, then it was probably still in his black Jeep, which had to be around here somewhere. So the Silverback would have to go back to get it. Samora and Beck could use that opportunity to scarper – or at least hide more effectively.
‘OK, I’ve had enough of this . . .’
The Silverback leaped for the same branches that Beck had used to pull himself up. He was taller and could reach them just by raising his arms. Beck waited until he was off the ground, then dropped down a little and slammed his foot down hard on the man’s fingers.
The man bellowed and let go. He landed on his backside. ‘That was unnecessary, kid!’ He clambered to his feet. ‘Are you going to behave or—’
Suddenly the trees at the far side of the clearing shook and parted. The Silverback whipped round – just in time to see a massive rhinoceros strolling into the moonlight.
Chapter 39
This was what Beck had heard earlier, he realized. The big man had moved quietly, but the thing that had woken him up had been walking heavily through the trees. Rhinos didn’t tiptoe. They didn’t care who heard them.
The Silverback gave a startled exclamation. Beck was even more relieved that he didn’t have a gun.
‘OK, OK . . .’ The man was talking very quietly. He didn’t take his eyes off the rhino, and the rhino didn’t take its eyes off him. ‘You’re the expert, kid. How do you make these things go away?’
Beck stared out into the moonlight, wide-eyed, but it was Samora who answered.
‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘They’ve got more right to be here than you.’
‘Oh, thank you . . .’
Across the clearing the rhino stood still. It lowered its horn and stamped its front foot into the ground, then let out a puff of breath that sent a small cloud of dust up into the air.
Beck knew that this was a warning sign. The rhino sure wasn’t happy with the intruder being so close.
If the man had any sense, Beck thought, he would quietly step backwards and disappear into the trees. But he also hoped that the man didn’t have any sense.
The rhino solved the matter for him. It let out a deep rumble and came trotting forward.
The Silverback gave a yelp and once again leaped for the branch above his head. Beck raised his foot to stamp on his fingers again, then slowly lowered it.
If this rhino was in a rage, then keeping the man out of the tree could be a death sentence. It could trample him, gore him with its horn or crush him with its powerful feet. Beck couldn’t do that to anyone. And so, reluctantly, he allowed the man to climb up into the tree.
The Silverback was now on the lowest branch, clinging on with both arms and legs, and Beck and Samora had climbed up a little higher.
The rhino came to a halt and looked up at the man quizzically.
‘Push off,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Shoo!’
The creature stood its ground, then let out another almighty huff of air. The tip of its horn scuffed across the bushes, and it blew out sharply through its nose again. Beck could tell that it was mad.
The hot blast of its breath smelled of lawn clippings and manure. It prodded the trunk with the side of its horn and the whole tree shook. The man clung onto his branch even more tightly.
Another rumble, and the rhino stepped back. It turned to view them sideways on, and the man took the opportunity to climb a little higher and cling on more securely.
But the rhino didn’t give him a chance. It decided to step sideways and rub its length along the trunk.
The tree shuddered again. Samora and Beck clung on tightly as their perch whipped back and forth. Loose twigs and leaves fell into Beck’s hair.
Beck wondered if the rhino thought they were all some kind of strange fruit that it wanted to knock down. The animal regarded them solemnly, then decided to give the tree a head-butt. The tree lurched like a ship in a storm, and when it sprang back to its upright position, it almost threw Beck off. The Silverback was almost shaken off his branch, managing to hang on with an arm and a leg.
The rhino gave the tree one more bash with the side of its head, and this time Beck heard the trunk crack. He clung on even more tightly, waiting for the tree to topple over. The Silverback was finally knocked off his branch, and plummeted to the ground, landing at the rhino’s feet. In one swift movement he picked himself up and fled back into the trees.
The rhino gazed after him and gave a rumble, then ambled slowly off into the undergrowth. As far it was concerned, the threat had gone. It disappeared from view, and the two friends could only follow its path by the noises it made.
Off to their right, an engine roared, and they heard a vehicle racing away into the night.
As their pounding hearts gradually calmed down, they returned to their campsite.
Beck thought for a moment, then bit his lip and kicked out angrily at the nearest piece of wood.
Samora blinked in surprise. ‘What?’
‘What?’ Beck exclaimed. ‘We were stupid, that’s what!’ Then fairness made him amend this to: ‘Sorry. I was stupid. We should have done a whole lot more to stay hidden. I shouldn’t have lit that fire. I should have camouflaged the shelter better.’
‘Beck, you couldn’t have known he would track us down . . .’
‘And . . .’ Beck remembered the way the Silverback had looked at him through the moonlight. Even though he could barely make out the man’s shape, his face had been clearly picked out. He must have seen Beck in exactly the same way. ‘He saw me through the trees because he spotted my face. The human face is shiny and distinctly shaped. So from now on we’re getting camouflaged.’
He climbed down the bank and crouched to remove a lump of charcoal from the snake-hole cavity. It had been a thickish branch when he put it on the fire. Now it was crumbly and grey.
‘Hold your face up . . .’
Samora tilted her head back, and Beck drew the charcoal across her forehead and down her nose. He continued the line down one side of her face. Then he stepped back an
d studied her thoughtfully, before stepping forward again and adding a couple more random patches.
‘That’ll do it. We instinctively see two eyes, a nose, a mouth, all in the right order. Even in the dark, those features turn into patches of light and dark. An observer naturally pieces together what he is seeing, filling in the gaps and making out a human face.’ Beck paused. ‘So this works to break up the pattern recognition.’
He put his head on one side to check his handiwork. He was pretty sure that he had added enough varying pattern to confuse the brain of anyone who happened to catch a glimpse of them and didn’t already know that they were people.
He handed Samora the charcoal. ‘Do me, will you?’
Chapter 40
They set off to walk through the last few hours of the night. Once again Beck saw the red light of dawn flooding over the grasslands before them. It was the second day of their trek.
They had enough zebra meat left to last them another day. Beck had used the fire to cook it all, so that would stop it from going off immediately.
At mid morning they came to a long belt of baobab trees wrapped around a large water hole that was more like a small lake. It was a very welcome place to break the journey. The two humans weren’t the only ones seeking shade and water. Some impala were grazing nearby and they studied them nervously before trotting away.
The baobabs were strange trees. It looked like someone had planted a row and then melted them. Their bark was smooth and shiny, their trunks very thick. But their fruit was good – the size and shape of a child’s rugby ball. The contents made your mouth pucker like you were eating something citrusy, but they were nutritious and filled the stomach.
The zebra-stomach water bottle was still a quarter full. They drank the rest of the water to get it inside them. It tasted pretty horrible, having been in contact with the stomach lining for some time, but they gritted their teeth and drank anyway.
Then they found a shallow part of the lake to fill the stomach up again, with more glugs and gurgles.
The shade of the trees was very welcome and Beck was aware that the full heat of the midday sun lay ahead of them. But they had to press on. Someone was after them, and they had to put as much distance between them as they could, and as quickly as possible.
As the afternoon drew on, Beck was delighted to come across a jackalberry tree growing on a termite mound. The tree wasn’t tall, only about three metres, with branches at the very top, covered in dark green leaves, making the tree look a bit like a capital T. It didn’t offer much shade, but it had fruit – yellow-green and round, the size of large conkers. Beck quickly shinned up the trunk and pulled some clusters off.
The skin of the fruit was tough – you had to use your front teeth to make a hole, then peel it back. Inside, the flesh was chalky, with a faint taste of lemons, but it was edible.
And below the tree was a termite mound, which for Beck was the best news of all.
It looked like it had been thrown up into the air by some underground explosion, and then frozen. It was steep and pointed, a little taller than Beck. Only two or three termites were in evidence, scurrying across the surface. But Beck knew that inside the mound there would be millions of them.
Pound for pound, termites are more nutritious than vegetables and a better source of protein than beef. This mound was like manna from heaven. Unfortunately, as Beck knew well, people tended not to see it that way. He ran various phrases through his mind, searching for the best way to suggest to Samora that maybe they should eat some bugs.
‘Do you like nutmeg?’ he asked conversationally.
Something in his tone made Samora glance warily at him. ‘I might. Why?’
‘Well, then . . .’ Beck picked up a stick. ‘You’ll like things that taste of nutmeg, right?’
Her eyes widened as she caught on, and to his surprise she smiled broadly. ‘You mean, like termites?’
She grabbed the stick from him, thrust it into the mound and twirled it around. When she pulled it out again, it was covered with termites. Their natural reflex had made them bite on and stay with it. She plucked one off and popped it into her mouth.
‘I’d never really thought about it before, but they are nutmeggy, aren’t they?’
‘Uh . . . yeah.’ Beck was still taken aback by how quickly she had dived in. He plucked a couple off the stick for himself. ‘OK – you’ve done this before, right?’
‘Well, it’s not like termites are all we eat in South Africa – we do have shops and things too – but, yes, I do this as a trick with tourists in the park and they always grimace at me!’
Beck smiled.
‘I do actually quite like the taste, though,’ she added.
Between them they finished off the stickful, and then set off again into the last hours of the afternoon.
They were making good progress, Beck thought as the sun cooled and the sky ahead of them turned red. This time tomorrow, they might actually be back at the Green Force lodge.
Ahead of them he saw a ridge of high ground. The trees and bushes at the top were outlined against the setting sun.
‘Camp?’ he suggested.
Samora gave it an appraising look. ‘There’s a lot of cover. Could be a leopard up a tree and you’d never know until he fell on you. But we can check it out—’ She stopped, head cocked. ‘Hear that?’
Beck listened for a moment. ‘Nope.’
Samora crept more slowly towards the trees, then stopped again, hand held up. This time Beck thought he could hear it too. A kind of whimpering noise on the wind. ‘Sounds like an animal.’
‘It sounds like an animal in pain.’
Beck immediately glanced up at the sky. There were no vultures. If an animal was suffering, it wasn’t yet interesting to the birds.
They followed the whimper carefully. And eventually they found the source, deep amongst the trees.
Chapter 41
It was lying on its side in a natural clearing of dry earth – an animal the size of a large dog. Its flanks were heaving, and every now and again it trembled, as if in terrible pain.
And in fact it was a dog – an African wild dog.
The lean body at the top of its long, skinny legs was a brownish yellow, striped and patterned in a natural camouflage that would have made it hard to spot in tall grass. It had a wide, blunt muzzle and a pair of ears like round radar dishes that immediately pricked up at their approach.
Beck could tell that it knew they were there.
But it neither growled nor raised its head to look at them. Beck suspected that meant it was too ill to worry about them.
‘Oh, the poor thing! Look!’ Samora whispered, though they could have talked at a normal volume for all the difference it made.
Beck saw that a length of wire was wrapped around the dog’s forelegs and shoulders. The loop was attached by another piece of wire to a branch above it. It meant that the forelegs were drawn up tight to its chest. It couldn’t have walked if it tried.
‘It’s a snare,’ Beck said sombrely. ‘Someone pulled the branch down to the ground, and tied or pegged it in place. Then they attached the loop of wire to that spring. An animal that stood in the snare would knock the branch loose. It would fly back to its former position, and tighten the snare.’
He had occasionally used snares to catch animals. But only as a last resort, when he really needed food. You tailored your snare to the kind of animal you wanted to catch, and you never just left it around for any old creature to wander into.
‘Poachers must have set it. The poor thing could have been lying here for days, dying slowly,’ Samora muttered.
‘Right . . .’ Beck moved slowly round to the dog’s head. Its ears turned to follow his movements. A pair of shrewd, dark brown eyes looked up at him.
‘Careful,’ Samora said. ‘They’re about as domesticated as wolves.’
‘Wolves aren’t domesticated,’ Beck pointed out.
‘Exactly. This one – she’s a female – sh
e won’t think of you as master. She’ll think of you as prey. Don’t be taken in just because she’s docile at the moment.’
Beck stepped back out of the dog’s line of sight. Dogs believe in dominance. If you’re bigger, and looking at them, they might take that as a challenge. He didn’t want this one to feel threatened.
‘Wild dogs are endangered, you know, Beck . . . We should try to free her,’ Samora whispered.
‘I agree.’ Beck had seen the intelligence in those dark eyes. He didn’t want to see them glaze over in death.
He still had the bone knife that he had used to cut up the zebra meat. It was tucked into his belt. He took it out and checked that the blade was still firmly attached to the handle. Then he circled round so that he could approach the dog from the rear. Her ears twitched. She still knew he was there, but if she couldn’t see him, he reasoned, then she might not panic.
Beck knelt down and worked the blade into the small space between her tightly bound front paws. He felt the blade press into the wire and snag on it. He began to wiggle the blade back and forth gently, in order to ease the wire loose. The bone was brittle – it might break at any moment.
The dog whimpered. Beck resisted the temptation to give her a friendly pat. As Samora had said, these dogs weren’t domesticated. This wasn’t his neighbour’s pet Labrador, the soppiest and friendliest mammal on the face of the planet. She was a dangerous predator in a temporary alliance with one of the humans who liked to think they ran the place.
The wire was now getting looser. Beck took hold of the loop and gently pulled it out of the groove it had cut into the dog’s leg. She grunted, and struggled. Beck lifted the snare off completely. The animal was free. Her front legs scrabbled on the ground as she tried to stand up.
Beck moved hastily away.
The dog staggered and fell forward. Her legs weren’t yet strong enough to take her weight.
Samora was beaming ear to ear. ‘Good job, Beck. Maybe we—’
