07 Elephant Adventure (5 page)

The beast tried to dig but his enemy with his tusks but they failed to reach him. Then he tried his trunk. This was a good eight feet long and circled the neck of the little black. The elephant pulled. There was every chance that he would succeed in hauling the pygmy from the hole and at the same time strangle him with that terrific grip around his throat

But the pygmy drew his knife and jabbed the point of It into the tip of the trunk.

There are two places where the elephant is very sensitive. One is the sole of his foot, the other is the tip of his trunk.

Snake-bite in either of these two places can kill him. In either place, the prick of a thorn will make him bellow with pain.

Jabbed by the pygmy’s knife, the elephant jerked his trunk from the hole and put the tip in his mouth, exactly as a child may do if he hurts his thumb.

But the elephant was not done. More angry that ever, he furiously stamped the ground around the opening into the hole, plugging it tight and buried his enemy alive.

The pygmy was not worried. He knew his friends would get him out.

What he didn’t know was that he was not alone in the hole. The ant-bear who had made it was not at home. But holes made by ant-bears are often used by other creatures - foxes, jackals, honey badgers, snakes, wild-cats, and wart-hogs.

This one happened to be the temporary residence of a porcupine. He was a big fellow and not too good-tempered. He objected to sharing his quarters with a rude stranger who barged in without saying, ‘If you please.’

No porcupine can throw his quills. And he cannot puncture you if he comes head on, because all bis quills point backward, not forward. But look out if he starts to back up.

This porcupine showed bis displeasure at being disturbed by backing up against a portion of the stranger that was as sensitive as the tip of an elephant’s trunk. The pygmy howled as several dozen needle-sharp quills punctured his behind.

He began clawing furiously at the earth above him. His friends were already digging for him, and in a few minutes they hauled him out - but what they saw made them rock with laughter.

The pygmy’s round rear was just one big pin-cushion stuck with black-and-white pins six inches long.

Still howling, he ran to the first-aid station, where he hollered even louder as the witch doctor pulled out the painful barbs, one by one. Then the pygmy doctor plastered the little fellow’s stern with mud and covered it with bark which he tied in place with vines.

In five minutes the pygmy had forgotten his experience and was back in the fight.

The beast the pygmies had selected was a huge female.

‘We’ll never get it,’ Roger said. ‘Why, it’s bigger than the one yesterday. And we thought that was a giant’

‘Biggest thing I’ve ever seen on four legs,’ Hal agreed. ‘It’s as tall as a tall man standing on the head of a tall man. And I bet it weighs a good twelve tons.’

Roger shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it. Nothing that walks on land could be that big.’

‘Oh, couldn’t it? So you’ve forgotten what you saw at Washington - in the museum. That was even bigger.’

Roger remembered. ‘You win,’ he said. ‘But I’ll bet you won’t win this elephant’

‘I won’t bet on that because I’m afraid you’re right’ Hal said, watching little Chief Abu poking the monster with his spear, trying to separate it from the herd. What could this morsel of a man do against this mountain of flesh? It was like a mouse attacking a lion, a squirrel against a grizzly bear. Abu’s head came no higher than the elephant’s knee.

A mounted specimen of an African elephant on exhibit in the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., measures thirteen feet two inches at the shoulder and when alive weighed twelve tons.

Then Hal saw that the little fellow was in trouble.

The chief had turned to give orders to his men. The elephant saw her chance to squash this bothersome mouse. She wheeled about and prepared to sit down on Abu. Elephants have learned from long experience that no animal or man can take that sort of treatment and come out alive.

‘Look out!’ Hal cried, but he did more than shout He leaped forward, knocked Abu out from under the subsiding mountain, and sent him spinning twenty feet away.

The little man picked himself up, looked around dizzily, trying to figure out what had happened to him.

Now it was Hal who was in trouble. He had tried to jump clear of the descending bone-crusher and had succeeded - almost Only his left boot was caught under the great rump. He wrenched and strained, but it was no use. Could he undo the laces? Was he going to lose another boot to an elephant?

But the elephant didn’t want the boot - she wanted the whole man. Before Hal could reach for his laces he felt something like a boa-constrictor go round him and squeeze the breath out of him.

The monster stood up, whirled Hal into the air and brought him down with a crash on the ground. There was no moss here to ease his fall. The shock was so great that he promptly fainted. He dreamed that one of those elephants of the sky had fallen on him.

Then the mist cleared from his mind and he realized that he was lying on the ground and the elephant’s trunk was feeling him from head to foot. He opened one eye just enough to see what was going on.

Nobody was coming to his rescue. The men stood about, hashed, watching. When Roger tried to run forward to help his brother, Abu stopped him.

Hal understood. The elephant thought he was dead. If anyone rushed in just now, the beast would become excited and really would kill him. Everyone was quiet, and he must remain quiet too.

It was hard to keep still with that gigantic hand running over his body. It was very much like a hand, because the African elephant has two fingers at the tip of its trunk. These are many times stronger than human fingers, as Hal realized when they pulled at his ear and then his nose and jerked up one of his hands and flung it down again. The beast was plainly trying to make sure that its victim was dead.

Hal thought for a moment of making a quick move. Perhaps he could suddenly roll out of reach. But he knew better. The elephant is not as clumsy as it looks. That trunk could move like a flash of lightning, or a tusk could go clean through Hal’s body before he had moved an inch. His only chance was to play dead, very dead.

Everybody and everything was as still as a tomb. He squinted again, just long enough to see that not only the men but the elephants as well were standing stock still, all watching this little act.

He was lucky - lucky that this was an elephant that stood over him, not a rhino or buffalo. Those beasts don’t stop when they think their victim is dead. They take out their savage rage upon it, plunge their horns into it, stamp on it, grind it into the dust, tear it limb from limb.

The elephant is not so brutal. It has finer feelings than any other wild animal, finer feelings than any tame animal except perhaps the dog and cat. Some say it has finer feelings than man himself - for no herd of elephants would set out to torture and kill tens of thousands of other beings as man has done more than once during his bloody history.

Hal felt the trunk go round him, and he was lifted into the air. Now he was being carried. He hung as limp as possible and did not open his eyes or show any sign of life.

He guessed what was going to happen. He had read about it many times - elephants are in the habit of burying their dead.

An elephant whose calf has died will carry it in its trunk or on its tusks to a quiet spot in the woods, lay it down tenderly, and cover it with branches and earth. Why, is anybody’s guess. Possibly to protect the corpse against attacks by jackals, hyenas, and vultures.

Even its enemy is so treated, for an elephant’s anger fades as soon as it has accomplished its purpose.

But what a strange funeral procession this was! Going to the burying-ground wrapped in an elephant’s trunk! It was so fantastic that Hal almost smiled. He could hear himself telling his grandchildren, if he ever had any: ‘A funny thing happened to me on my way to the grave.’

Now he was being laid on the ground. He was not dropped, nor thrown, but put down very gently on a bed of fallen leaves. The trunk that had gripped him relaxed and was withdrawn.

Now leaves were being brushed over him. They tickled his cheeks and chin and it was hard to keep from screwing up his face. That would be fatal. The elephant’s gentleness would change to fury. It would feel that it had been made a fool of and would probably pick Hal up and dash out his brains against a tree. Hal must stay dead to stay alive.

Now twigs and branches were being laid across him. At first it was small stuff, then heavier branches were laid on, and still more heavy. They pressed hard on his face and chest. What was the reason for so much weight? Perhaps to make it impossible for even powerful beasts like the leopard to get at him.

The branches jammed the leaves down upon his face, stopping up his nose and mouth so that it was hard to breathe. How much more of this could he stand without suffocating? Then he would lose consciousness and never regain it. The elephant’s kindness would kill him.

Perhaps this business of playing dead could be carried too far. Perhaps he should throw off this load before it became too heavy, before it completely smothered him.

He could not decide. Every moment it was more difficult to get air into his lungs. A deadly sleepiness crept over him. He forgot where he was and felt he was drowning in a deep dark sea and didn’t care.

Suddenly he was roused to life by sharp stings on his face and hands, down inside his shirt, and up and down his legs inside his safari trousers.

Even elephants make mistakes. This one had laid its victim on soft leaves, but unseen beneath them was a nest of fire ants. Now they had gone to work on Hal from head to toe. It was just what he needed. His drowsy brain woke up.

How strange that he should have been almost killed by the kindness of the greatest of Africa’s creatures, and saved by the anger of one of the smallest.

More bites, hundreds of them. He couldn’t bear it. Anything was better than this.

In a spasm of energy he began flinging off leaves and branches. He came out to look into the eyes of a most astonished elephant He leaped to his feet and began to run as fast as his stiff legs would carry him. The elephant with a scream that chilled his blood, came thundering after him.

Hal knew it was foolish to run.

Experienced hunters say, ‘Never run from an elephant’ The elephant can do twenty-five miles an hour when it has to, and it would take an Olympic sprinter to come anywhere near that

Or a pygmy. The pygmies can cover the ground at amazing speed. Their light little bodies fairly seem to fly. And it was the pygmies who saved the day for Hal.

Two fast-footed young men overtook the great beast and followed so close on its heels that they were in danger of being kicked into Kingdom Come. Each slashed a hind foot with his knife.

Roger, sprinting along behind, could not imagine what good this would do. A couple of little pokes with a knife could not stop this thundering locomotive.

But the little elephant-hunters knew what they were doing. For hundreds of years the pygmies had stopped elephants in just this way, by cutting the tendons in the hind legs.

The elephant trumpeted with pain, stumbled, and stopped. The hind feet were tipped up on edge. They wobbled helplessly, no longer controlled by the stout tendons like ropes that run down the back of the leg.

The elephant whirled to attack the pygmies, but they nimbly jumped out of the way. They did not need to hurry. The elephant could only stagger slowly alter them, dragging its hind feet.

Hal, who had expected to feel the hot breath of the giant down the back of his neck and the point of a sharp tusk between his shoulders, turned to see what was going on.

His first feeling was of relief. But his pleasure turned to bitter disappointment when he saw the prize he had hoped to capture limping and staggering as if mortally wounded.

He came running back to learn what had happened. When he saw the knife-cuts he knew this fine animal would never go to any zoo. In fact it would never go anywhere. It would suffer terrible pain. It would be unable to travel about to get the six hundred pounds of food an elephant must find every day to keep that great factory going. It could not get to a water hole. It would die of thirst, unless it died of starvation.

He felt as sorry for the noble beast as it had felt for him when it believed him dead.

The other men had come on the scene and Abu was among them.

‘Why did they do it?’ Hal demanded angrily. ‘They knew I wanted to take it alive.’

Abu looked at him curiously. ‘But they wanted to keep you alive. Which was more important?’

Hal was ashamed.

‘Of course - they did what they had to do. And I am grateful’ He looked at the suffering beast. 1 wish I could do something for it But there’s no way to stitch up a cut tendon even if the animal would stand still to

let me do it. It will have to be put out of its misery. Toto, bring me the gun.’

‘Save your powder,’ Abu said. ‘We will kill it,’

The herd had come close, and now a squealing young elephant came running out to the wounded monster and fondled the big beast with its small bunk, making little sounds of. distress and affection. The disabled elephant seemed to find comfort in the presence of the young one and threw its trunk over the small body.

‘Must be her baby/Abu said.

‘What will happen to it if we kill its mother?’ Roger asked.

That was a question the little chief couldn’t answer and he didn’t try. He called out a young pygmy spearman.

‘He will kill the elephant,’ Abu told Hal.

‘He alone?’

‘Alone.’

‘But he is so young,’ Hal objected. ‘You must have hunters with more experience. And why use only one? You have seventy - why not have all attack together?’

‘You don’t understand,’ the chief said. ‘It is a custom of our people. This young man wants to be married. First he must prove that he is a man. He must kill an elephant with no help from anyone. It is our way.’