07 Elephant Adventure (4 page)

Roger in his bed at the other side of the tent was already asleep. Hal would have liked to talk to him, to talk to anybody. He strained his ears to listen. He could hear nothing but the pounding of rain on the tent root

Tomorrow he would be going out among the monsters to meet the biggest monster, the elephant. He had already failed on his first try. The chief did not believe he would get one, and Hal was half inclined to agree with him.

The only encouragement had come from little Abu, but it was absurd to think the dwarfs could do anything for him against the king of the forest

In a deep blue funk he drifted off into a troubled sleep. He dreamed that the little chief suddenly grew as tall as a

tree, picked up elephants between his thumb and forefinger, and when Hal asked for the elephants Abu only laughed with a laugh that shook the mountains, popped the elephants into his mouth, chewed them up, and spat out the bones.

Hal woke. The mountains really were shaking. No - it was Roger who was shaking him.

‘Wake up, you slouch. Don’t you know it’s morning?’

‘Oh, go fly a kite.’ Hal mumbled.

For answer, he got a poke in the ribs.

‘Wake up. Abu is here.’

Hal sleepily opened his eyes. He half expected to see the Abu of his dream, towering among the stars, munching elephants as if they were peanuts. Instead here was the real Abu. a little wrinkled old man, smaller than Hal’s kid brother.

The little chief bowed.

‘I will help you get elephants, yes?’

Hal had to admire this tiny creature who was willing to face the greatest animal of Africa.

‘It is a good day for elephants,’ Abu said.

Hal realized that the rain had stopped. The sun was shining in through the open flap of the tent

‘Hurry up.’ Roger insisted. ‘Get your duds on and 1‘11 show you something that will make your eyes pop.’

Hal flung on his clothes and followed Roger outside. Roger sometimes exaggerated, but he hadn’t exaggerated this time, Hal’s eyes popped.

All about him were the giant flowers of this crazy.

hard-to-believe landscape. Behind them towered the giant forest Above the forest lay a grey mist But above the mist was a city in the sky. white, dazzling, full of castles, towers, minarets, and spires, all sparkling brilliantly in the morning sun.

Hal at first took them to be fantastic white clouds. Then he realized they were not clouds. They were the peaks of the Mountains of the Moon.

The mist below them separated from the earth so that they looked as if they were floating in the sky. They were so for above that they seemed to belong to another planet One could imagine that they were a part of the moon, or Venus, or Jupiter. Certainly they glowed like the full moon, sparkled like the stars, seemed as distant as Heaven itself.

‘We’re lucky to see them,’ he said. They’re hidden in clouds most of the year.’

These were the mountains that had been taken off the map because explorers failed to see them and decided they did not exist Now they were on the map, but still not one traveller in a hundred ever-saw them. Even the natives who lived on their slopes seldom caught a glimpse of their peaks. And the men of Hal’s safari, whose homes were in Uganda, looked on them for the first time. Their jaws hung open and they seemed rooted to the spot as they stared at the white city.

‘What makes them so white?’ one of them asked. Is it salt?’

‘No,’ said the wiser Joro. ‘It is something they call mow.’

‘What is snow?’

This question stumped Joro. He tried to conceal his Ignorance by saying: ‘Don’t ask foolish questions.’

But how could people who lived on the Equator know anything about snow?

‘You may follow the Equator all the way round the world and find no snow except here and in the Andes/ Hal remarked to Roger.

‘But there’s enough here/ Roger said, ‘to go all the way round.’

Hal plunged into the tent and brought out a map. He studied it, then looked up at the white peaks.

That’s Mount Stanley - named after the fellow who said it didn’t exist, then changed his mind. That’s Alexandra Peak, that’s Albert Peak, and the highest of all is Margherita. There are flocks of other peaks. Nine of them are over sixteen thousand feet’

‘Why are they sticking out their tongues?’

Hal laughed. ‘I see what you mean. Those things hanging down that look like tongues are glaciers. They are shown here on the map - Speke Glacier, Elena Glacier, Grant Glacier, and a lot of others. When the glacier crawls far enough down the mountain to get into wanner weather it melts and out from the end of it comes a river. All these rivers help to make the Nile. When it, comes to glaciers, these mountains take the cake. There’s no such gang of glaciers on the Equator anywhere else, not even in the Andes.’

‘You know what they look like?’ Roger said suddenly. ‘A herd of white elephants.’

Hal laughed. ‘You’re right. And those things you called tongues - they’re the elephants’ trunks. Pretty big elephants! Some of those trunks must be five miles long. Now I can understand the Watussi superstition - that the mountains are elephants. And who wouldn’t be afraid of elephants that big?’

He looked up again. The elephants of the sky were gone.

As if by magic, they had vanished behind a curtain of mist

The boys would never see the elephants of heaven again. But they would meet them on earth, and they could never see them without thinking of the sky monsters with trunks five miles long.

Swiftly the dark mist spread. Its clammy fingers clawed at the ground. A chill drizzle began to fall.

‘I’m afraid the weather has returned to normal.’ Hal shivered. ‘A good day to stay in bed.’

But Abu and his men did not seem to mind the cold rain on their bare bodies.

‘We go now?’ said Abu cheerfully.

‘We go now,’ agreed Hal.

‘First you will drink this.’ Abu offered a gourd containing a pink liquid. When Hal hesitated, Abu said:

‘We always drink this before we go on a hunt’

‘Why?’

‘It makes us strong.’

Then I wouldn’t think of taking it away from you,’ Hal said. ‘You have so many men - you will need it’

‘We have all drunk of it There is enough left for you and all your men.’

Hal could think of no more excuses. He raised the gourd and took a sip of the strange liquid. It was rather familiar.

‘Why, I know that taste. What is it?’

Abu smiled. ‘Cola.’ he said. ‘In your country you must buy it in bottles. Here we don’t have to buy it. We pick it off the trees. Big pink nuts - our women boil them and pound them and boil them again. Good, no? Drink it.’

Hal would willingly have thrown out the rather dirty liquid behind a bush, but Abu watched him until he had downed every drop, and all his men had drunk too.

The pygmies had another treat in store for their visitors. They brought a pan of evil-smelling grease and went about smearing the faces and hands of Hal, Roger, and all the crew. Their own bodies were covered with the same stuff and they smelled to high heaven.

‘I’ve had about enough of this,’ Roger growled. ‘ What’s the grease for?’

‘I think it’s elephant fat’ Hal said. They put it on to drown the man smelt Then when the elephants catch their scent they think they are just smelling other elephants.’

Roger held his nose. ‘I wish I were an elephant’ he said. Then I wouldn’t mind the smell.’

Abu led the way into the forest Behind him trooped seventy or more of the little black hunters, and Hal’s crew of thirty.

It would be strange indeed, Hal thought if a hundred men couldn’t take one elephant And yet he had an uneasy feeling that luck was not with him. The vision of those mountainous elephants of the sky stuck in his mind.

Of course he didn’t take seriously the Watussi notion that when the mists concealed them they came down into the forest as real elephants. But that monster yesterday - how easily it had outwitted him and his twelve men.

The pygmies slipped along like shadows from tree to tree. They stepped so carefully that no twig snapped beneath their feet They were completely silent Frequently they stopped to listen. There wis no sound except the faraway call of a bird and the ‘boom-boom’ of a gorilla.

So the quiet march continued for an hour. Suddenly Abu stopped and held up his hand. There was a sound now that did not come from birds or gorillas.

Somewhere up ahead there was a rustling of leaves and a breaking of branches and the rumbling and snorting of big beasts. All this noise could not be made by one elephant.

‘Must be a big herd of them,’ Hal whispered.

This was more than Roger had bargained for.

‘I prefer to take my elephants one at a time,’ he said. That one yesterday was too much for us. What can we do with a whole gang of them?’

‘Guess well just have to trust the pygmies. They seem to know what they’re about’

Roger was not so sure. ‘Are you crazy? Three of those little runts wouldn’t make a good mouthful for an elephant’

Another signal from Abu. At once all the pygmies went up the trees like monkeys. With amazing speed they clambered into the tree-tops.

They’re running away,’ whispered Roger. ‘Leaving us in the lurch.’

1 don’t think so. They go up there so they can see better what’s ahead.’

Like little Tarzans, the pygmies were swinging along by the lianas that tied tree to tree. They were moving towards the sound, trying to get a good look at the herd. From their high perch they would be able to see how big a herd it was, whether it was made up of female elephants and their babies or bull elephants as well, just where they

should attack and what beast they should try to take. Hal and his men followed on foot

The crackling and rumbling and screaming sounds of the herd grew plainer every moment

Now the pygmies were pointing and gesturing excitedly. They could see the herd.

At a sign from Abu they swung along from vine to vine, from branch to branch, until they were gathered over the beast he had selected.

They were eighty feet above the animals. If the elephants smelled them, it was only elephant smell because of the elephant grease they had rubbed on their bodies. Even if man smell remained it would not get down to the herd because the breeze would blow it away eighty feet above their heads. Roger had to admit that the little fellows were pretty smart.

It was one of the safari men who gave the game away. He tripped over a root and fell with a thud.

It was nothing compared with the racket made by the feeding elephants. But even when an elephant is making plenty of noise himself he has an ear sharply tuned for any other sound.

At once the breaking of branches and crunching of teeth stopped. There was dead silence in the woods. It it remarkable how noisy an elephant can be when he is feeding - and how silent when he suspects he is being hunted.

The herd began to melt away without a sound. How such huge beasts could move without cracking a twig underfoot had been a mystery to naturalists for years. Finally the secret had been discovered. The sole of an elephant’s foot is not a hard hoof. It is soft and elastic It is full of tiny muscles and delicate nerves. If a sharp stone is underfoot the nerves know it and the muscles make a hollow to fit the stone so it does not hurt the skin. If an elephant loves its keeper it can step on his hand without doing any harm even though the beast weighs many tons. But if it hates its keeper it can flatten that hand until it is as thin as a piece of paper.

When elephants feed, and do not need to be quiet about it, they crush or break every branch they, step on. But if they wish to sneak away without being heard they can step on the most brittle twig without breaking it. A man, even barefoot, cannot step as lightly as an elephant, even though the elephant may be a hundred times as heavy as the man.

But the pygmies did not let the herd silently slip away. Down they came from the tree-tops, sliding, swinging, jumping, screaming at the top of their lungs.

It was enough to scare even an elephant. The great beasts spread their enormous ears, threw up their trunks, blasted the air with shrieks of anger and alarm. They milled about in circles. Everywhere they turned little black men danced before their eyes. The elephants tried to swat them with their powerful trunks. But when the trunk swooped down where the pygmy had been, he was no longer there.

One man was caught. A snaky black trunk went round his body and he was tossed up into the air. The elephant waited to stamp him underfoot as soon as he fell to the ground.

But he did not fall. The astonished elephant looked up. The little black man had caught hold of a branch and swung himself up on top of it. There he sat, laughing at the beast that tried in vain to reach him with its long trunk.

An elephant doesn’t like being laughed at. It is almost the only one in the entire animal kingdom intelligent enough to know when it is being laughed at. The beast below the tree trumpeted angrily, and crashed his iron-hard forehead against the tree which, being a young one and not firmly rooted, promptly tumbled to the ground. The elephant poked among the branches in search of his victim. But the pygmy had scrambled out of reach.

Another of the little hunters was not so fortunate. An elephant swung his trunk like a gigantic golf-club and knocked the little fellow spinning through the air above the backs of other elephants to fall at last between two of the huge beasts, where he was squeezed so badly that he lost consciousness. Before he could be trampled upon, other pygmies seized him and carried him to a safe place where a witch doctor was treating those already hurt in the fight

An elephant can tighten the muscles in his trunk to make it as stiff and hard as a wooden beam. Then he can bring it down on a man or animal with killing force.

A pygmy twice jumped out of the way of a descending trunk. As it was about to come down the third time he saw an ant-bear hole and hopped into it.

He dropped down out of sight and the trunk struck the ground with a terrific blow above his head.