06 African Adventure (2 page)

Hal drew his knife and closed in to rescue the dog. The two bodies whirled about so fast that it was hard to distinguish between the dog and the big cat. Hal’s knife might find the wrong animal. Then a strange thing happened. The leopard, with a howl of pain, released its jaws from the dog’s throat. Zulu’s collar, covered with heavy, brass studs as sharp as nails, had saved her. The points had stabbed the palate of the leopard and made it relax its hold.

Now it turned on an enemy it could hope to conquer more easily, and Hal felt the full crash of the leopard’s body against his own, striking him with such force that he tumbled backwards into the water. The impact had sent the knife flying from his hand. By instinct he gulped a lungful of air, just as he and the beast plunged beneath the surface. He felt the savage claws tearing at his clothing and biting into the flesh. He knew that a leopard’s claws can do far more damage than a lion’s, because a lion mauls with his front feet only, while a leopard uses all four at once. And teeth as well.

Probably his father and the others were now on the bank, but there was little they could do to help. He must work this out for himself. He hooked his foot under a waterlogged branch that lay on the river bottom, and so held himself and his quarry under water. Could he drown the beast? Or would he himself drown first?

He had had a good deal of experience during his underwater adventures in the Pacific. From his Polynesian friends in the South Seas he had learned how to last a good three minutes without coming up for air.

He had no idea whether a leopard could do better than that, or not so well. He clutched the animal’s throat, trying to hold the head well away so that the powerful jaws could not reach his face. But he could do nothing about those ripping claws. Curiously enough, they did not hurt. Later on they would - and plenty.

Staying down three minutes without exertion is one thing. Staying down three minutes while locked in a life-and-death struggle with a big cat is something else. Hal was getting winded. But the leopard was not doing too well either - the fight had almost gone out of it and now it was only anxious to get away. Hal grimly held on. His enemy’s struggles grew weaker. If he could just hold the creature down one minute more…

He had forgotten about the crocodiles. The swish of a powerful tail close by reminded him. A crocodile would ordinarily think twice about attacking a man - but attracted by blood it might think only once, or not at all.

Hal loosed his foot and came to the surface. His head emerged and he took air, but he still held the leopard’s head under water. A beam of light from the shore struck him and he heard his father’s voice. Then both his father and Roger leaped in beside him and hauled him ashore, his hands still gripping the motionless leopard’s throat. They dragged the beast up on to the bank and Hal put his hand over the heart. The leopard was dead.

‘How about you?’ Hunt asked. ‘Did you get badly mauled?’

‘Only scratched,’ Hal said, still too excited to feel his wounds.

The Africans were happy and terrified. Happy that the killer of their children was dead, terrified that it might come alive again in human form.

The limp body lay on the river bank. Not one of the Africans would touch it. When Roger went towards it the headman said sharply:

‘Keep away. It is still full of magic’

Hunt studied the worried face of the headman.

‘You really believe that, don’t you? You went to a Christian mission school, you speak English, you learned something about science - and you are afraid of a dead leopard.’

‘My friend,’ smiled the headman, ‘not all wisdom is to be found in school. Our knowledge is passed down to us from our father and grandfathers. We have always known what you have learned for the first time tonight - you have seen it for yourself. The leopard became a man and the man became a leopard. And all the time it was neither man nor leopard, but an evil spirit.’

Roger, under the spell of the night and the strange things that had happened, was staring at his father with open mouth.

‘Perhaps there’s something in it, Dad. It’s all been so crazy I could believe almost anything.’

His father grinned. ‘I don’t blame you. But perhaps it isn’t quite as mysterious as it seems. I think I’m beginning to see through it. You remember when we were following the tracks from the village and they became lost in the grass, and when we found them again they seemed peculiar. At the point of each toe-print there was a claw mark. But a live leopard doesn’t keep his claws out when he walks. Those prints were made by dead feet.’

Roger’s jaw hung a little farther open. Was his father going a bit barmy?

‘Dead feet,’ his father went on. ‘The paws of a dead leopard strapped to the feet of a man. You remember that the grass wasn’t flattened down as it would be by a leopard. It stood two feet high, as it would if a man’s legs had brushed through it. That man was trying to mislead us so that we shouldn’t find the real leopard. Later we saw the man - dressed in a leopard skin.’

‘But why - why should he try to lead us off - and why does he dress like a leopard?’

‘Because he belongs to the Leopard Society. That’s a band of killers. It’s not so active here in Uganda, but we are very close to the Congo border and it’s strong in the Congo and all through Central and West Africa. It’s a very secret society. When a man joins it he is given a leopard skin to wear, leopard’s paws for his feet, and steel hooks strapped to his fingers so that he can claw his victims. He is taught that he can actually change into a leopard at will. And since he belongs to the leopards, he must defend all leopards. He must kill anybody he is ordered to kill. Especially he must kill anyone who kills a leopard.’

Roger’s forehead was puckered with the effort to understand all this.

‘So he led us off the leopard’s trail,’ he said. ‘Then we saw him - and he ran. But when we found him again he had changed into a leopard.’

His father smiled. ‘He didn’t change into anything. He was a man, and is a man. Then we heard the real leopard,

and Hal stalked it. And there it is.’ He glanced at the dead animal on the bank.

‘And where’s the leopard-man?’

‘Who knows? Probably skulking around in these woods waiting for his chance to do us in for killing his brother beast.’

‘A comforting thought,’ said Hal. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

As they turned to go, a flash of one of the lights revealed two more leopards - but very small ones - emerging from a hole in the trunk of the baobab and running to their dead mother to suckle. Mewing like oversize kittens, they nuzzled against the quiet, wet body.

‘Poor little duffers,’ Hunt said. ‘We’ll take them back to camp and see if we can’t fix up some substitute for mother’s milk.’

‘Let me carry them,’ said Roger. ‘Will they claw me?’

‘Not likely. They’re too young to be afraid of you.’

Roger, a little gingerly, with a proper respect for both claws and jaws, gathered up the two babies, one in each arm.

‘And we’ll take the big cat too,’ Hunt said. ‘Some museum will be glad to get that skin.’ He signalled to the Africans to take up the body. When they showed no sign of obeying, he did not press them.

‘Well, Hal, it’s up to us.’ He drew some cord from the pocket of his bush-jacket and tied the feet together, while Hal found a fallen branch that could be used as a pole. The pole was run through between the looped feet, and with Hal at one end and his father at the other, the 100-pound cat was raised from the ground and began its journey to camp. The two lights were kept sweeping here and there, on guard lest the leopard-man should be lying in ambush.

‘And how about the male?’ said Hal. ‘Isn’t he apt to pounce on us when he sees us carrying off his family?’

‘A male lion would be after us in a minute,’ said Hunt. ‘But a male leopard isn’t a family man. After he’s started things off, he lets mamma take care of the children and herself. He’s probably miles away, hunting.’

Roger, carrying the cubs, was suddenly startled by a cold nose against his wrist. He expected to feel teeth next, for this must be the father of the cubs. Should he drop the little animals and run? He peered down into the gloom. The animal he saw was not quite like a leopard - no, it was just the big Alsatian, Zulu.

The dog was a handsome female, owned by Mali. Though a lady, Zulu was every bit as strong, courageous and beautiful as a male. And she went beyond a male in her affection for anything small on four wobbly legs. Before coming on this safari, she had had to leave a litter of pups. Unable to mother them, she now seemed to want to mother the leopard cubs, and kept sniffing at them and nuzzling her nose into -their fur as she trotted alongside.

It was a relief to come out of the dangerous dark into the warm glow of the camp-fire lighting up the circle of tents.

‘Bring a cage for the cubs,’ Hunt said. ‘A large one, so they’ll have plenty of room to play.’

Mali and Toto hauled down a lion cage from one of the trucks. Hunt padded a large clothes-basket with a warm blanket and pushed it into one corner of the cage. Then the cubs were introduced to their new home. Just before the door was closed, Zulu slipped into the cage.

‘Come out of there,’ commanded Mali. But the dog whined and retreated to the far side.

‘Suppose you let her stay,’ suggested Hunt. ‘Let’s see what she has on her mind.’

Mali closed the door. Zulu, with ears cocked forward, studied the two balls of fur. She sat on her haunches and seemed to be lost in thought. Then she came forward and sniffed at each in turn. They did not seem exactly hike pups, but they were just as helpless. Certainly they needed somebody to look after them.

She went over by the basket. Looking back at the cubs, she gave out a series of little yipping barks which plainly said, ‘Come here!’ The cubs did not understand. They lay quiet and frightened on the cold, hard floor of the cage.

With a business-like air, Zulu walked to one of the cubs, gripped the fur at the back of the neck in her teeth, and lifted the squirming animal from the floor. She seemed to find it a bit heavier than she had expected. She carried it to the basket and laid it down on the blanket. Then she brought the other cub and laid it beside the first. There was still room in the large basket for herself. She stepped into it, lay down in a half-circle, and drew both cubs against her. After a protesting mew or two, they snuggled close to her, evidently enjoying the warmth of her body, because an African night, even near the Equator, can be cold.

In the meantime Hunt was treating the scratches on Hal’s arms and chest. Luckily Hal’s heavy bush-jacket had prevented the claws from going very deep.

‘Just scratches,’ Hal said. ‘Never mind them.’

‘ ‘Just a scratch’ from a leopard’s claw can be serious if it isn’t attended to,’ his father told him. ‘The claws can be highly poisonous, because the leopard eats dead animals and particles of the decaying flesh remain in the claws. Hold steady.’

He cleaned out the wounds with boiled water and applied a strong antiseptic. Mali returned from a search in the bushes with some leaves and roots which he proceeded to pound until they gave out a thick, white milk. This was smeared on as a poultice and covered with bandages.

But one cut in the left arm was too deep and wide for such treatment. It had to be sewn up, and Hunt, searching through his medical kit, discovered that his supply of catgut thread needed for sutures was exhausted.

‘We will use ants,’ suggested Mali. Hunt had often heard of this art, for it is practised by primitive tribes all over the world, but he had never seen it done. He watched with great interest as Mali poked into one of the anthills so common in Africa and stirred up the white ants, better known as termites, until the warriors rushed out. He seized one of these and squeezed it until its jaws opened wide. With skilful fingers he drew together the edges of the cut in Hal’s arm, then placed the open jaws one on either side of the cut, where they bit savagely like two pincers, completely closing the wound. He broke off the ant’s body, leaving the head in place and the jaws locked. They would remain locked until the wound healed, when the ant-jaw stitches could be removed.

More ants were used in the same way until a row of heads extended the full length of the cut. Hal and his father looked on with admiration as the skilful black fingers put the last ant-clamp in place, then applied the milky poultice and a final bandage.

Wounds so treated generally heal without difficulty, but Hunt took the added precaution of giving Hal a strong hypodermic injection of penicillin.

No one thought it worth while to go to bed, for dawn was already streaking the east with rose and silver.

One of the mysteries of the night had not yet been solved. What about the tracker, Joro? He had been ordered to go along on the hunt. But when he was needed to read the tracks, he was not there. Why had he stayed in camp? Or had he stayed in camp?

Tell Joro I want to see him,’ John Hunt told the cook, who was going round from tent to tent with cups of steaming coffee.

‘Joro is not here, bwana’

‘But he must be here. He didn’t go with us.’

The cook seemed surprised. ‘He wasn’t with you? Where else could he have been?’

‘That’s exactly what I want to know. There he is now.’

The cook turned and looked across the camp ground. Joro was just coming out of the bushes. Evidently hoping he would not be seen in the half-dark of dawn, he crept like a cat to his tent and slipped inside. As usual, his chest and back were bare, his only garment a well-worn pair of safari pants. He seemed to carry some sort of bundle under his arm.

‘Ask him to come here,’ said Hunt.

When Joro came, Hunt was impressed by the drawn, haggard face and hate-filled eyes of his tracker. It was not the first time he had noticed this bitterness in the man’s face, but it had never been so marked as now. But Joro was a good tracker, and this was the first time he had definitely disobeyed orders.

‘Joro,’ said Hunt, ‘I asked you to go with us last night. Didn’t you hear me?’