08 Safari Adventure (2 page)

‘Oh yes they do. If you are an elephant, the chances are all they want is your tusks, or perhaps your feet to make waste-paper baskets, or your tail to be sold as a fly switch. The wild beasts don’t eat those parts, So the beast gets its dinner and the poacher gets the rest and they are both satisfied.’

They were now dropping fast towards the thorn hedge.

‘What do you plan to do?’ Hal inquired.

‘Just give the poachers a good scare. Let them know that their camp has been located. Sometimes that’s enough to make them pack up and leave. Of course, it may not work. There may be a lot of them and they know we have very few rangers. But they don’t know that tomorrow we are going to have thirty more men -your men. We’ll come out here tomorrow by road, the whole lot of us, and give them the surprise of their lives.

Now I’m going to give you a good look at this trap-line.’

The ‘plane swooped lower. The beginning of the hedge was directly underneath. Looking down the line, the boys could see that almost every gap held an animal. Some hung still and lifeless. Some struggled fiercely and their screams could be heard over the roar of the engine. Packs of hyenas, jackals, wild dogs, and other meat-eaters were enjoying a feast. The strange ‘laugh’ of the hyenas, the yapping of the wild dogs, the yipping of the jackals, the occasional rumble of a leopard or roar of a lion added to the general tumult.

So that the boys could get a good look, the warden had cut the motor down to about thirty miles per hour. The Stork, with its flaps down, was quite capable of staying in the air at this slow speed, though its normal speed was one hundred and forty.

Now the temporary straw shacks of the poachers could be seen among the trees. Crosby, flying within fifty feet of the ground, examined the camp closely. ‘Bigger than I thought,’ he said.

Suddenly a swarm of black figures burst out of the forest, armed with bows and spears. A volley of spears and arrows came climbing towards the little plane.

If this were an ordinary plane, they would harmlessly pepper the bottom of the fuselage. But the cabin of the Stork is enclosed in a bubble of Perspex, which even curves in a little at the bottom towards the floorboards, so that the occupants of the plane Can look straight down to the ground beneath. This is ideal for the purpose of complete visibility but offers little protection against ground fire.

Since Crosby was gripping the control, his elbow was well out in the bulge of Perspex. Suddenly he jerked it in with a little exclamation of surprise. He dropped the exposed arm beside him where Hal would not see it and held the stick with his other hand. Sharply he gunned the plane up well out of reach of ground fire, then levelled off straight for Kitani Safari Lodge.

Hal was unaware of what had happened. But Roger, sitting behind the warden, saw the black arrow that had gone through Crosby’s arm just above the elbow. The arrow-head had passed through the fleshy part of the arm and come out on the other side.

‘Hal - look,’ Roger said. ‘The warden - his arm …’

Hal leaned forward so that he could see the half-hidden arm and arrow.

‘Never mind it now,’ Crosby said. ‘The important thing is to get you to camp before I go to sleep.’

‘You think the arrow was poisoned?’

‘Probably.’

Hal examined the arrow-head, looking for the black, gummy paste made from the highly poisonous Acocanthera plant.

‘I don’t see anything - except your own blood.’

‘You wouldn’t see anything on the point. They don’t put the poison there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they might prick themselves with it A man tumbling around in the bush with a quiverful of arrows on his back with all the poisoned tips sticking up would be a great danger to himself and to his friends.’

“Then where do they put the poison?’

‘On the shaft, just behind the arrow-head.’

‘But that’s the part that’s in your arm. Shouldn’t we get it out of there as quickly as we can?’

‘You can’t reach it.’ It was true. The front seats were almost two feet apart. The injured arm was on the warden’s far side. Hal could not get at it without interfering with the control of the plane.

‘I can reach it,’ Roger said. ‘Just tell me what to do.’

Hal thought a moment. The arrow-head was barbed. ‘You can’t pull it back,’ he said. ‘Try to break off the arrow-head. Then pull out the shaft.’

Roger leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat, gripped the arrow-head and did his best to snap it off. The wood was very tough. He put on more pressure. His hand was wet with blood. Sweat came out on his face and he felt faint - not that the effort hurt him, but he knew he was hurting the warden. Crosby said not a word.

Crack - the barbed head broke off.

Now for the most painful part of the operation. Roger hoped to make his patient suffer as little as possible. One good jerk and he would get the shaft out of the arm.

He laid hold with both hands, gritted his teeth, and gave one mighty tug. The shaft held fast. The plane staggered. Crosby at once brought it back under control.

‘Must be wedged between muscle and bone,’ Hal said. ‘Give it another try.’

Roger had once thought he would like to be a surgeon, Now he changed his mind. His body was streaming with sweat and it wasn’t because this country, Kenya, is crossed by the equator. He knew the agony he was causing. He laid his bloody hands on the shaft again, gathered up all his strength and yanked. No luck.

He worked the shaft up and down to enlarge the hole. He knew this must hurt like the devil, but he didn’t know what else to do. Once more he yanked and the shaft came free.

The warden opened his mouth, and Roger expected him to shout something like, ‘You clumsy kid!’ but all he said was, ‘Good boy!’

‘Give me that,’ Hal said. He took the shaft and looked at the part that had been embedded in the flesh. Through the blood he could see a black sticky substance.

‘I’m afraid that’s it,’ he said.

What chance did the warden have? He might live, he might die. Hal had .seen Africans preparing this stuff. They themselves were deathly afraid of it. They took great care not to get a bit of it on themselves. They boiled it out in the bush, not in the village - that would be too dangerous. A drop might spatter out of the pot on to the skin of a man, woman, or child. If there was a scratch on the skin, even though it might be no larger than a pin point, the poison would enter.

What happened then would depend upon the strength of the poison and the physical endurance of the person who was poisoned. A child might die in a few minutes. One woman died while she was being carried a few hundred feet to her house. Another died within twenty minutes. Hal had heard of a man who lasted three hours before he died. A strong man who had been struck by the arrow of an enemy tribe lay unconscious for two hours and then recovered.

It made a difference whether the poison was fresh or stale. If it was new it acted quickly. If it had been on the arrow-shaft for many days and had dried and been covered with dust it might not cause death.

The warden slumped against the stick, pushing it forward. Immediately the plane plunged towards the earth in a steep spiral.

Hal seized the stick in front of him and tried to pull it back. He couldn’t do it - Crosby’s weight against the other control was too much.

The earth was approaching at terrifying speed. ‘Pull him up,” Hal shouted to Roger.

Roger had plenty to do to hold himself up in this crazy contraption whirling on its nose like a top. His seat-belt helped a little. He supported himself against the back of the front seat with one arm, got his other arm around the warden’s neck and heaved. Crosby was not a light man and if Roger had not been big for his years he could not have budged the heavy body. He raised it a few inches, then a few inches more, and, with Hal pulling on the control at the same time, the plane hesitated in its dizzy dive and began to point upwards.

A few more head-over-heels revolutions and the wings steadied, the whirling stopped and the plane swooped upwards just in time to escape the reaching arms of a tall kapok tree.

Roger still held back the warden’s unconscious body while Hal settled down to the uneasy business of flying a strange plane without either practice or instructions. He had to guess his way across the instrument board and some of his guesses were pretty wild.

Where was the gizmo that controlled the brakes? Or were they governed by the foot pedals? The most ticklish job would be landing. He must get ready for it. How did you lower the flaps? Any one of half a dozen levers might do it. He tried them until he found one that produced the right effect - the sudden check of extra lift and drag.

Once on the ground, he must apply the brake so that he wouldn’t taxi right off the strip into a tree or a cabin. How to do that he couldn’t tell until he was actually on the ground. Then it might be too late.

Meanwhile he peered ahead through the whirling propeller, looking for the landing field. His eye travelled all round the thatch buildings of the safari camp without finding an asphalt runway.

Finally he spotted a wind-sock. That must mark the airstrip, but where was the strip? The landing field appeared to be just that and nothing more - a field.

He was now directly over the camp. He circled the field, calculating the chances of getting down to it without striking the trees that blocked it at each end.

He was just about to come in for a landing when he saw something peculiar in the middle of the field. Something yellow and black lay on the green grass. Then a part of it moved and he knew what it was: a family of lions.

They were basking in the sun, quite undisturbed by the noisy plane. Hal knew that lions were not afraid of planes, trains, or cars. More than once he had driven his Land-Rover close to a pride of lions and stopped within fifteen feet of them and they did not budge an inch. Kings of the animal world, they were not easily frightened.

He could not wait for them to wander off. They might not move for an hour or more. He had a patient on board who required prompt attention. He had to get rid of those lions, and fast.

He swooped down to within twenty feet of them. They were all stretched out comfortably in the grass. Some looked up at him lazily, others did not even open their eyes.

One huge black-maned male lay on his back with all four paws in the air. He did not even bother to roll over.

Hal circled and came in again, lower this time. He kept the throttle full open in order to make as much thunder as possible. It was a dangerous business, roaring in at a hundred and forty miles per hour so close to the ground. This time one lioness with a brood of cubs decided they would be safer on the sidelines and led them away.

Encouraged by this success, Hal made another dive. This time he would really singe the fur of these haughty beasts.

He didn’t quite do that, but he came so close that when he circled up again he saw that the lions were on their feet, the males roaring angrily, and even the upside-down animal had taken notice of this buzzing gadfly that was disturbing his slumbers. The whole pride moved away with slow dignity to the edge of the field.

Hal at once lowered his flaps, throttled down to a glide and came in for a more or less perfect landing. The brake linkage seemed to be as he had hoped, and he brought the plane to a bumpy halt within a few feet of the trees.

The warden seemed dead to the world. Hal felt his pulse. The heart was beating, though faintly. So there was still a chance.

The helpless body was eased down to the ground. A man came running from the camp. He was dressed smartly in a light-coloured uniform that ended at his elbows and his knees and contrasted with his very black skin. His military-looking cap had an insignia in front and a thin cloth kepi behind hanging down over the back of his neck to keep off insects, after the fashion of the old-time French Foreign Legion. This must be one of the warden’s ten rangers.

‘What happen?’ he asked, stooping beside the body in the grass.

‘Poison arrow,’ Hal said.

The ranger put his ear to the warden’s chest.

‘No dead. We take to the judge. Judge, he fix.’

‘He needs a doctor.’

‘No doctor. Judge, he good, he fix.’

Hal didn’t wait to ask questions about the judge who could fix. There was one thing that could be done at

once. He whipped out a handkerchief and tied it round the arm above the bleeding wound.

Together, they carried the warden to the main building. The interior was furnished with comfortable chairs and a large desk. It evidently served the warden as both home and office. The unconscious warden was carried into his bedroom and laid on the bed. A little man came bustling into the room.

‘This is the judge,’ said the ranger. ‘He fix.’

The judge’s slightly dark skin marked him as a native of India. There were many Indians in Kenya.

‘An accident?’ he said.

Hal explained briefly what had happened.

‘Ah yes,’ said the little judge. ‘How fortunate that I was here. I know exactly what to do.’

Roger, whose eyes had a way of seeing things that other people did not notice, saw the bright light that came into the judge’s eyes. The judge seemed almost happy. Perhaps it was just his kindly nature. Perhaps he was happy because he could help.

‘First,’ he said, ‘off with that tourniquet.’ He quickly untied it and flung it aside.

‘But I just put it on,’ said Hal. ‘I wanted to stop the poison from going through his system.’

‘You meant well,’ said the judge kindly. ‘But, you see, it’s better to allow the poison to be diffused through the entire system than concentrated in one spot.’

Hal had never heard this theory before, but it sounded logical.

‘Shouldn’t the wound be syringed with distilled water?’ Hal asked.

‘Wrong again, my boy.’ The judge spoke like a father gently reproving his foolish son. ‘What he needs is an injection.’

‘Ammonium carbonate?’ asked Hal.

The judge’s eyes narrowed. He seemed surprised that Hal should know these things, and a little annoyed. He covered his annoyance with a sweet smile.