African Pursuit (12 page)

‘How do we know they’ve really gone?’ Sarah whispered to Ben after a few moments. He shrugged his shoulders in reply but gestured that they should remain hidden, a decision with which Sarah heartily concurred. Suddenly the truck vibrated as the leopard sprang off the roof to the ground. It stood with its paws up on the tailgate and looked in to the truck.

‘I think it’s giving us the all clear,’ said Sarah. ‘They must’ve gone.’ They clambered down with some drinks and sat together on a log.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Ben after a few moments. ‘I’m sure that lorry went back the same way that it came, didn’t it?’

‘Wow,’ said Sarah, ‘you’re right. And that means …’

‘Yeah,’ continued Ben. ‘It means that whoever they were they weren’t just passing – they knew the lorry was there and came deliberately to destroy it.’

‘Which means… it must have been our lot coming back to finish us off,’ finished Sarah.

‘Exactly,’ said Ben. ‘And don’t you see,’ he added with a grin, ‘that means they think they’ve finished with us, so we’re safe.’

‘Especially,’ Sarah added thoughtfully, ‘as other people are going to be less interested in a burnt-out truck than one just parked in the road.’ It was true; they had passed many pillaged and burnt-out vehicles on their long journey west and such a commonplace sight was unlikely to excite much interest in any passing vehicles. ‘So all we have to do now,’ she continued happily, ‘is sit here with the leopards and snakes guarding us and wait for the others to find us.’

Ben thought for a moment. Their situation had certainly improved dramatically, but there were still some seemingly impossible practical difficulties to surmount.

‘How will they know where we are?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Sarah, ‘but I’m sure it’ll be OK. They found us to give us the message, didn’t they? Maybe a leopard will go and find them or something.’ She was remembering some of the tales the family had told about Lucy’s adventures in the Amazon, and felt certain Lucy would somehow find them.

‘What if one of those birds comes again?’ said Ben. ‘Shouldn’t we get a message ready for it to take back?’

‘Good idea,’ said Sarah. She went back to the truck and got a pencil and paper. They discussed the note and then she wrote:

“We’re safe and the bad men have gone. They think we’re dead. We’re hiding in the forest near a burnt lorry on the road. It took us two days to 
get here from the Stanley waterfalls. The leopards and snakes are guarding us and we have enough food and drink to last ages.

Love, S and B.

PS I mean two days and nights!”

She folded the letter up small and twisted one of her elastic hairbands round it.

‘There. Now we just wait for a Hogwarts’ post bird to arrive!’

C
lare, Clive and Lucy drove steadily through more mountainous terrain towards the rainforests. They had purchased visas at official border points but, as they had been warned, were subjected to frequent requests for “extra” visas and bribes at various key junctions and roadblocks. The further west they progressed the more aggressive and intimidating these requests became. Sid and his gang had coped with this problem by unseen help from the professor and by brute force, but these options weren’t open to the unarmed trio and soon Lucy started to resort to assistance from the animals. Gun-toting para-militias at unofficial roadblocks would suddenly lose all interest in the Land Rover when large snakes appeared on the scene or venomous insects landed on their jackets. The roads got worse and worse and they soon realised that the current spell of dry weather was a true blessing; many of the roads they were using would have simply been impassable in the wet. Soon the animals warned Lucy that they were about to enter the realm of the junglekin and Clare and Clive saw that she had become very thoughtful. She was recalling an episode in the Amazon when a blow on the head had deprived her of the ability to speak to the animals. She had recovered within a couple of days but those two days had reminded her just how lonely and helpless she could be without the support of her animals.
Now as they lurched along the dreadful roads towards the forests she suddenly wondered whether she could really track down and save the children from a bunch of desperadoes with only minimal help from the animals. Their interactions with officials, soldiers and paramilitary groups at roadblocks and river crossings had reminded her just how much she needed the animals’ support in this hostile and lawless environment. The more she thought about the problem, the more urgent it seemed to find a solution. Clare was driving and after some further pondering Lucy suddenly leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder.

‘Stop! I need to make some preparations.’

‘I wondered what you were hatching up sitting there in silence,’ said Clare with a grin as she pulled onto the side of the road. Unfortunately the long grass on the verge was concealing a storm drain alongside the road. The Land Rover gave a sickening lurch to the side and ground to a stop at a drunken angle.

‘Oh ****!’ said Clare. ‘I’m so sorry.’ They jumped out and Clive fetched the spade that all bush vehicles carried for such emergencies. He tried to build up some earth in front of the front wheel but the drain was so deep that the body of the vehicle was embedded into the earth and his attempts to free it were hopeless.

‘Looks as if it’s over to you Luce,’ he said. ‘Shades of a stuck aeroplane?’ They all had to smile despite the seriousness of the situation as they remembered Lucy enlisting the aid of various animals to free a plane from a bog in the Valley of the Great Ones.

‘Let’s just hope and pray,’ he said, looking serious again, ‘that nothing’s damaged. I should think any kind of help will be a long time coming in these parts.’ Clare agreed and then pointed to Lucy. She was already standing with the look on her face that they both knew meant she was calling to the animals. Soon a small flock of
birds appeared and after consulting with Lucy flew off in different directions. Clare and Clive exchanged amused glances: they had witnessed such little scenes many times before.

‘While we’re waiting,’ said Clare, ‘just before my piece of precision parking you were about to announce some plans. Tell us all.’

‘Well,’ Lucy replied, ‘I’ve already told the birds what I need – as well as getting help for the car – and now we need to make some preparations. First we need a box; then we need some space in the back of the truck where we can put a blanket or groundsheet.’ With a puzzled look, Clive fished out a cardboard box from their provisions in the back and emptied it.

‘Perfect,’ said Lucy and cut a hole in the side with her nail scissors. Then she took the spade lying by the front wheel and propped it up at an angle against the back of the truck. Clare and Clive were by now both completely mystified.

‘OK,’ Clive said, ‘We give up. What on earth are you doing?’ Lucy laughed.

‘I was thinking about how we were going to cope in the forest without the help of the local animals – except possibly the leopards. I decided the best thing to do was to take those we need
with
us.’ At that moment a bird flew back and perched on a twig near Lucy.

‘
The nearest cornukin is but a league away. He cometh hither at thy bidding and will be here anon.’

Lucy thanked the bird, then turned to the others.

‘The RAC is on the way but won’t get here for a bit. That gives us time to settle the others in’.

‘What’s the RAC?’ asked Clive. He was a member of the RAC in England – the Royal Automobile Club which gave roadside assistance – but wasn’t sure what was going on here.

‘… and who are “the others”?,’ asked Clare. But Lucy just smiled and pointed. In the distance, across the scrub and bush, a small black cloud had appeared and was approaching rapidly. Soon they could hear a buzzing sound that got louder and louder until the bees came up to the Land Rover and landed in Lucy’s box, the lid of which she had left open. When the swarm was inside she shut the lid and after a few moments one or two bees came out of the hole she had made and started to explore nearby.

‘Look!’ said Clive suddenly, and pointed to the side of the road in front of them. A puff adder had appeared and was slithering towards the car. Soon, from other points on the verge, a rock python and two black mambas emerged.

‘Ah, the others,’ said Lucy happily as the snakes slithered up the spade into the back of the truck and curled up in the space Clare had prepared with a blanket. ‘The snakes don’t care about coming into the jungle and I told them we’d bring them out again later,’ she explained. ‘From previous experience I think they could come in very useful. The bees were more of a problem because I didn’t want to move an existing hive. I asked the birds to see if they could find a swarm looking for a new location and they did just that. This is their new home,’ she pointed at the box. ‘I expect they’ll find moving about a bit confusing but I’m sure they’ll be OK. We’ll bring them back again later if they want, but maybe they’ll just settle for somewhere in the jungle when we’ve finished with them.’

After about half an hour the bushes parted and an enormous shape loomed into sight. For such a large creature it made remarkably little sound and as it approached Clive and Clare instinctively moved behind the Land Rover.

‘Here we are,’ said Lucy to Clive. ‘The Rhino Automobile Club
awaits your instructions!’

Clive explained what was necessary to Lucy and she passed his instructions on to the rhino. Clive was desperately worried that the metre-long horn on the animal might damage some vital part of the underneath of the car. In the event, one might have been forgiven for imagining that the creature had been brought up on a garage forecourt. With exquisite precision it inserted its massive horn into a perfect position on the underside of the chassis and lifted the vehicle into the air as though it were a twig. Twisting its neck it gently flicked the front of the car sideways onto the road and then withdrew to survey the result as if it were an artist stepping back from an easel.

‘Good God!’ was all Clive could bring himself to say. He crawled under the front of the car to check things out but neither the original calamity nor the rhino’s intervention seemed to have caused any significant damage. ‘Phew,’ he said as he got up and dusted his knees. ‘I think we’re OK’. He got in the car, started it up and tested the steering and the brakes. ‘I think you can thank the RAC and send him back to the office,’ he said to Lucy with a relieved smile. ‘Everything’s just fine. Just one question: how on earth did you find him – I thought rhinos had been practically wiped out in this area?’ Lucy turned and spoke to the rhino before replying.

‘I think you’re right. He says that he and two others were brought from far away and they’re the only ones round here. People keep checking on them. It sounds as if they’re on some kind of private reserve to re-establish the population.’ She spoke again to the rhino and he lumbered away into the bush.

‘Right,’ said Clare, getting back behind the steering wheel. ‘Are we ready to go?’

‘Hang on,’ said Lucy, ‘I think the remainder of “the others” are
just arriving.’ As she spoke two eagles plummeted towards the vehicle and perched on the roof. ‘OK,’ she continued. ‘We’re now all present and correct – I’m not sure we’ll be able to find any messengers in the forest, so we’re taking a couple with us.’ Clive, a keen birdwatcher, was impressed.

‘Those are Bateleur eagles,’ he said, admiring their haughty orange faces and striking black and white plumage. ‘Why did you ask for them?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Lucy with a smile. ‘I just asked for something a bit heftier than a hawk. If the owls in the forest are going to be unfriendly it seemed sensible to take along something that could look after itself!’

They had now lost a lot of time and had no idea how far behind the villains they were. Clive and Clare shared the driving and they
tried to keep going without stopping except for fuel. On the advice of the car hire company they had taken a substantial amount of fuel with them but Clive was anxious to preserve this for later in the trip and they filled up wherever the opportunity presented itself. The almost inevitable attempts at extortion by the fuel vendors were usually brought to an abrupt halt by the black mambas who reared up and swayed threateningly in front of anyone who Lucy felt was trying to exploit them. One glance at the most dangerous snakes in existence always brought a surprisingly rapid and satisfactory end to any negotiations.

As they passed into the rainforest there was a distinct feeling, even to Clive and Clare, that they had passed into hostile territory. They had become accustomed to animals and birds going out of their way to assist, or merely catch a glimpse of, the Promised One but
now there was a dark and forbidding atmosphere in the depths of the jungle. Any road block they came across they now dealt with immediately using the animals they had on board. The bees proved invaluable. As soon as somebody stepped into the road with a gun he was surrounded by a swarm and disappeared under cover in an instant while Clive and Clare drove through the block. Lucy would later be proud to announce at the end of their adventure that she didn’t think a single bee had lost its life in her service: the experience of simply being enveloped in a swarm of the insects seemed to be more than enough deterrent for the most aggressive of soldiers or rebels. At road blocks they increasingly noticed that the wooden posts that could swing up and down like barriers at a railway crossing were broken or even torn out of the ground. They would have been greatly amused had they realised that their journey had been made easier by the previous handiwork of those that they were chasing, for Sid had simply driven through such minor obstacles.

Clive was depressed by their slow progress. The roads were frightful and, as they could not call on assistance from the forest elephants or hippos they had to be extremely careful not to get stuck. Often they could not progress at more than five or ten miles an hour. The only consolation was that they realised that the villains ahead of them must have encountered the same problems, perhaps even worse, for the birds’ descriptions suggested that the lorries they were pursuing were much larger and heavier than their own vehicle. After a day deep in the forest when they had seemingly made little progress, Lucy sent one of the eagles on an exploratory mission. It did not return that night, and Lucy began to fear that it had fallen victim to the predators of the forest, but the next day it returned clutching the children’s note.

‘Great,’ said Clare in relief after they had all read the note. ‘At least they’re out of the clutches of the thugs – and seem to have some supplies though quite how that’s come about is a mystery. No doubt we’ll find out soon.’

‘Now all we’ve got to do is find them somewhere in the middle of the greatest jungle in Africa,’ said Clive.

‘I’m going to try and use the eagles to quide us,’ said Lucy. ‘One of them now knows where the children are and it may be able to sort out the best route for us if I can get it to understand we need to stay on the roads.’ Sure enough, after a consultation with the birds, Lucy was happy that they were on a road that would eventually lead to the children. Clive got out the map while Clare was driving and tried to work out where they were heading.

‘It looks as if we’re going towards a river called Lomela,’ he said. He paused and his brow furrowed. ‘How extraordinary,’ he murmured.

‘What? What is it?’ asked Clare.

‘Where did you say your Mum and Dad were going, Salonga or something?’

‘Yes, the Salonga National Park is a massive reserve – the largest in the Congo. Full of unusual trees for them to get excited about.’

‘Well look,’ Clive pointed and both the girls leaned over. ‘It’s further on than the Lomela river but we’re heading straight for it.’

‘What an amazing coincidence,’ said Clare. ‘Talking of which, I wonder how they’re getting on. I hope they got the message we left at the hotel.’ As they were speaking a small hawk glided down. It looked exhausted after its long and dangerous flight. Lucy spoke to it.

‘I come with tidings from the arborimane,’
it said.
‘The tuskikin, cornukin and greatkine are gathered in great numbers and are ready to trample the junglekin at thy command. The manefang, fleetfang, 
cacklekin and wolfkin will go where the giant greypods cannot pass and the hipposnorts and the Dreadful Ones will make the jungle waters safe for thee.’
Lucy turned and spoke to one of her eagles which immediately flew off, then addressed the messenger bird.

‘I thank thee,’
said Lucy.
‘When thou hast rested and eaten thou must return and tell the arborimane that he has done well, but that no creatures must attack the junglekin until I have spoken to their Special One.’
As she finished the eagle returned with a plump rodent and laid it in front of the messenger hawk which flew with it to a stump and started to devour it ravenously. Lucy then turned to the others.