by David Alric
‘What do you think I should do next? Who should I tell, and what do I say?’
Grandpa thought for a moment.
‘The camp is in Brazil,’ he said eventually, ‘so ultimately any action will be taken by the Brazilian authorities, but it might be easier for you to ring the Foreign Office in London. The one thing that will guarantee their attention is the fact that you can give them an exact map reference. They’ll have to check on that site – the information is so specific – and we know they’ll find something.’
‘But they’re bound to ask how I heard about this in the first place,’ said Lucy. ‘I obviously can’t tell them I can talk to animals, and it’s going to seem pretty odd that I should know about this place when I live in a London suburb.’
‘That’s simple,’ broke in Grandma who had been following the conversation with quiet interest. Lucy and Grandpa both turned to look at her.
‘You say that you have a penfriend who lives in an Amazonian village and that she – or he – has told you about rumours they have heard about this place, far upriver in the jungle, but they are frightened and have made you promise not to reveal who they are or where they live.’
‘That’s brilliant, Grandma!’ said Lucy, ‘It’s foolproof!’
‘Well,’ said Grandpa, ‘there’s your plan of action worked out; all that remains is for you to go and do it – but first –’ he stopped and Lucy looked in alarm at his stern expression. Then he grinned. ‘Remember your promise to Grandma this morning. It’s time you were in bed, or your mum’ll be after us.’
Lucy kissed them both good night and went to bed, excited at the thought that, at last, she was really going to do something to help her animals.
1 See map at front of book.
2 Author’s note:The name of the city is not given at the request of Lucy and Richard who wish the anonymity of the site of the former jaguar camp to be preserved.
6
A Crash in the Jungle
Two months earlier, just before Lucy’s accident, her father was starting in his new job in South America. After spending a few days at Ecocidal Timber Company’s headquarters in Rio, Richard flew to the company’s river office in Macapá and he was now sitting chatting to the branch manager, José Verdade, and his wife Francesca, who had invited Richard to stay at their home before he began work in the jungle. José told Richard how he had come to work for ETC.
‘I was born in Brazil and even as a boy I was interested in our forests and knew how important they were for the environment. As a young man I was determined to try to prevent their destruction so I studied forestry at university then joined the company because it claimed to obtain timber in a sustainable fashion. I felt I could help preserve the forest by working with such a company.’ José then asked how Richard had joined the company.
‘I’m really a botanist,’ Richard replied, ‘and I’ve never worked for a commercial company before. I was a university senior lecturer until three months ago when my department closed down because of government cuts. The very next day I saw, by chance, an advertisement in the paper for a biologist to work with ETC to help discover types of tree that might produce brand-new medicines to cure cancer and other diseases. I was offered the job and here I am, ready to fly to your most remote logging site tomorrow. I have to confess I wasn’t that keen on Sawyer – Chopper I think you all call him – the boss in Rio, but meeting you and Francesca has reassured me and I’m getting really excited.’
They chatted for a little longer but soon Richard began to yawn and Francesca suggested that he should have an early night. Richard needed no further prompting: he was still suffering from the effects of jet-lag and, remembering that it was now 4 a.m. in London, he collapsed gratefully into his comfortable bed.
After Richard had retired José and Francesca continued to talk, now reverting to Portuguese, their native language. They were discussing a problem that had bothered José greatly during the last few weeks. He had joined the company in the belief that he could help with forest conservation, but had soon discovered that his company was just as bad as any other in terms of its destructive behaviour towards the environment. He had also found out that ETC was using the timber business as a cover for drug smuggling and illegal gold mining. He had consulted Francesca who had cautioned him not to do anything hasty and not to allow anyone to know of his suspicions.
‘Drugs mean death,’ she had said, ‘and not just to those who take them, but to anyone who crosses the dealers.’
José knew she was right and they had decided to wait a little and hope that in some way the wrongdoings of the company might be exposed without José putting himself or his family at risk.
The next day Richard said goodbye to Francesca and José and boarded the little company plane that would take him to the furthest company site, which was to be his base for the next few months while he searched for unknown trees and plants. As they took off from Macapá the plane turned and rose above the mouth of the mighty river. The pilot saw Richard gazing down in wonder and smiled.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The river mouth we are flying over is just one of many mouths forming an enormous delta which is nearly three hundred kilometres wide. The river drains the Amazon basin which is an area bigger than the whole of Western Europe. It pours so much mud and silt into the sea that it changes the colour of the ocean for three hundred kilometres!’ Richard could see the giant muddy stain of the river spreading in the sea out to the horizon.
The journey was one of a thousand miles across the Amazon basin and after a while the plane landed at a small airfield where they could refuel and take the opportunity to rest and have a meal. Richard had noticed several times on the journey that they had passed over areas of reduced visibility and now, as they sat outdoors in a local village restaurant, the air, at first hazy, became dark with smoke and a fine ash settled on their food and clothes.
‘They’re burning the forest,’ said the pilot, as if in answer to Richard’s unspoken query. ‘It’s the quickest and cheapest way of clearing the ground and it goes on all the time. Often I can’t land because an airport is closed by the smoke, especially when I go further south to places like Port Velho, Imperatriz and Cuiabá. The burning is a double whammy in terms of global warming and climate change. It not only removes valuable forest but the act of burning releases millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. The scale at which this is going on is almost unimaginable – the scientists think that every minute of every hour, day and night, an area of forest equivalent to seven or eight football fields is being destroyed by burning and clearing. Just think how much has gone since we have been sitting here!’
Richard was depressed by the pilot’s words and became more determined than ever to use his new job to try to correct things: little did he suspect that the company he worked for was one of the worst offenders and that it would be his daughter, not himself, who would eventually start to reverse the destructive process.
Eventually they reached the camp that would be Richard’s base for the next few months. As the pilot expertly guided the plane on to the narrow airstrip that had been cleared in the forest he suddenly swore and wrenched at the controls. Richard heard a skidding noise and felt a clunk under the plane, but soon they came safely to a stop. The pilot sighed in relief, then turned to Richard with a nervous grin.
‘Some fool left a log on the strip – could have finished us, but we’re OK!’
The next day Richard was very excited. He was, at last, going to start on the real scientific work he had come to do, and after spending the morning on final preparations, he set off in the plane with the company pilot. Soon they were flying over the most remote jungle on earth. The green canopy stretched, apparently endlessly, to every horizon, broken only by the glistening ribbon of an Amazon tributary whose meandering path the pilot was using to guide him ever further into the interior. After a while the pilot pointed down at the river which was now shrunk to a thread as they neared its sou
rce.
‘This is the furthest I’ve ever been,’ he shouted over the noise of the engine. ‘It’s unknown territory from now on, so keep your eyes strained for your fancy trees.’ He handed Richard a pair of powerful binoculars and flew lower, just above the treetops, to give Richard a better view. If he could see an area with unknown and promising tree species he would note its position on his global positioning system receiver, and return later with a canoe and an overland expedition to obtain his specimens.
Suddenly the pilot tapped Richard on the knee and pointed to the fuel gauge.
‘We were OK until a few minutes ago but it’s suddenly gone down. A fuel line must have been damaged by that wretched log I hit on landing last night. We don’t have enough juice to make it back to camp. I’m heading for those hills on the horizon; it looks as though there’s a more open area just before them where I may be able to make a go at a landing.’
Without further warning, and when they were still at least a couple of miles from the hills, the engine cut out and the little plane glided swiftly into the canopy. Richard braced himself as the trunks of enormous trees loomed ahead and as the plane passed between two forest giants there was a sickening crunch and the scream of ripping metal as both the wings tore off. The remaining fuselage hurtled down towards the forest floor, miraculously avoiding any further major trees and then crashed through smaller trees and shrubs to the ground, finally skidding to a stop with a violent jolt in the dense undergrowth.
Richard was unconscious for no more than a few seconds but as he came to he felt as if he had been asleep for much longer. As he regained his faculties he realized he had a bad headache. Blood was trickling into his eye, and touching his forehead he could feel a large bump where he must have crashed into the instrument panel. Gradually the events immediately prior to the crash came flooding back into his memory. He turned to speak to the pilot but as soon as he saw the unnatural angle at which his neck was lying he knew that he was dead. He sat and thought about his situation. The radio was smashed beyond recognition and the GPS receiver had disappeared in the tangled wreck of the cockpit floor. The plane had penetrated the forest canopy and come to rest several hundred yards from its point of entry through the thick roof of leaves and branches. He knew it would be completely invisible from the air.
The more he thought about his situation the more he realized that the normal rule of survival, to stay at the crash site until help arrived, probably did not apply in this case. He decided his best chance was to try to reach the high plateau that the pilot had been aiming for, with the intention of reaching a rocky area free of trees where he might light a beacon in the hope that the smoke might attract the attention of any search plane. As he was a nonsmoker he went through the pilot’s pockets to see if he had any matches or a lighter. It was a horrible feeling invading the privacy of the dead man’s clothing but he forced himself to do so; in the event his search was fruitless. He looked around the shattered cockpit, then cursed himself for his stupidity. The entire cockpit floor was covered in shards of glass from the broken instrument panel. Using one of these he could easily make fire by focusing the rays of the sun. He collected some suitable fragments and put them in his pocket. He thought briefly of struggling to extract the pilot and bury him but immediately realized that the task was beyond him. The pilot was a big man and he was inextricably trapped in the wreckage. He gently closed the dead man’s eyes and removed a gold identity bracelet from his wrist which was inscribed with his name: ‘Domingos Icares’. He also took his wedding ring with the vague thought that he ought to try to give the man’s family some personal mementoes should he ever reach civilization again. He arranged two struts from the broken hatch in the shape of a cross on the man’s chest, said a brief prayer of committal, and then felt he could do no more.
Turning to the matter of his own survival, he twisted round and managed to pull his rucksack out from behind his seat. He kept his compass and Swiss army knife but then emptied the bag of its remaining contents – all his scientific reference books and other items representing unnecessary weight. He replaced these with two bottles of water from a holder on the inside of the plane door, some emergency flares and as many tools as he could fit into the bag from an emergency kit bolted to the nearby bulkhead. Getting out of the plane was no problem for most of the cockpit canopy had been ripped off. As he began to clamber out, however, the thought struck him that it was already late afternoon and that soon he would be in the jungle at night. Uninviting as the prospect was of spending the night next to a corpse, he knew that it would be sensible to stay in the relative safety of the plane and then set out for the plateau at first light. His head was, in any case, already pounding from the brief physical exertion he had just undertaken and he knew that it would be wise for him to rest before embarking on what would inevitably be a gruelling expedition. He pulled back the remnants of the cockpit cover to give as much protection as possible, then leant back to sit out what he knew would be a long and scary night.
As darkness fell the sounds of creatures of the day diminished and all kinds of new noises began. On several occasions he froze in fear as he heard claws scratching at the fuselage and the paws of unknown creatures scampering across the plane. On one occasion a large animal, taken unawares by an object lying on its favourite night path, bumped into the plane and actually shifted its position slightly in the undergrowth. The night was punctuated with the growls and hisses of the hunters and the screams and squawks of the hunted. Eventually Richard fell into a fitful sleep, fearful of the challenge ahead of him and wondering if he would ever see his family again.
He woke to the sound of a repeated, melodious, bell-like chime. At first he thought it was an early caller at the front door at home, ringing the bell while the family were still asleep. As he came to he quickly remembered where he was, however, and found himself face to face with a monkey peering through one of the cracks in the perspex cockpit cover. Richard jumped in fright and the startled monkey fled into the trees.
The bell-chime started again and now Richard could see that it came not from a postman with a parcel, but from a pure white bird the size of a jay, sitting on a nearby branch. As Richard pushed the broken canopy back the bell-bird flew off, and a little later he heard the characteristic ‘dong-dong’ of its call from further away. Then there came a sound that chilled him to the marrow. A moaning sound came from somewhere above him; it grew louder and louder and became a howling that seemed to make the entire jungle pulsate with shattering noise. Terrified, Richard pulled the canopy over him again and, as the noise began to diminish, he peeped up into the treetops. There was a rustling in the highest branches and then a troop of brownish-black monkeys suddenly appeared, leaping from tree to tree. They stopped, nearer to Richard, and then he saw the largest individual sit back on a branch, open his mouth wide and restart the dreadful noise. He was joined by all the others until once again the jungle was deafened by their howling and shrieking.
Relieved to find the authors of the noise were howler monkeys and nothing worse, Richard started to make preparations to leave. Amidst all the excitement since first waking Richard had gradually become aware of an intermittent buzzing noise in the cockpit and he turned to see that large flies were already settling on the pilot’s face. It was definitely time to go. He picked up his rucksack, clambered down to the ground, checked his compass and set off into the jungle.
The journey was a nightmare. The canopy above shut out most of the sun so he travelled in a kind of gloom broken here and there by dappled sunlight trying to penetrate the dense foliage. The effect was similar to the interior of a cathedral, partially lit by sunlight streaming through stained-glass windows. The ground cover in this undisturbed forest was thinner than he had imagined it would be, but his progress was obstructed by tangles of immense roots and fallen branches. As he walked and scrambled through the forest the exposed parts of his body became covered in scratches and he soon had a livid rash on one arm which stung worse tha
n a dozen stinging nettles where he had brushed against some poisonous plant.
He was soon drenched in sweat as he thrust his way though the giant ferns that covered the forest floor. Everything was wet. Countless drops of water dripped ceaselessly from every twig and branch and an unbelievable variety of lichens and mosses adorned the boles and branches of every tree, whether alive or dead. Exotic tropical flowers were everywhere to be seen, most of which even a botanist such as Richard could not begin to identify. The air was full of noise from insects, birds and monkeys, and giant, spectacularly coloured butterflies flitted in front of his face as he stumbled across the forest floor. Although the overall impression on the senses of this jungle scene was one of awesome beauty Richard was not deceived by appearances. He had heard the forest described as an ‘emerald mansion’ but he knew that for a lone traveller it was really a green hell: a place where death lurked at every turn – not just from pumas or jaguars or other predators but from snakes, venomous frogs and toads, spiders and centipedes, and parasites and insects whose bites or stings could cause all kinds of loathsome diseases.
He first became aware of the jaguar by a stroke of good fortune; normally the master stalker of the jungle would have been upon him without warning. He stopped to sit on a branch to remove some leeches from his legs and arms when he suddenly saw a large porcupine break cover and, for a normally slow-moving animal, scurry remarkably quickly towards him. Its quills were stiffened in alarm and it passed within a few feet of him before disappearing into the undergrowth. At the same time there were frantic alarm calls from a flock of birds in the trees above the bushes from which the large rodent had emerged, and looking over he just caught a sight of yellow fur in the branches. Even in a brief glimpse the beautiful markings of the jaguar were unmistakable and he knew he was about to face his greatest challenge. There was nowhere he could seek refuge; his stalker was truly in its own element and had Richard completely at its mercy.
