07 Elephant Adventure (13 page)

When dinner was served he proved as hungry as any of his new friends. He turned up his six-foot nose at cow’s milk, for he was quite old enough to eat solid food, and put away several hundred pounds of mopani brush.

‘What do we do tonight?’ Roger wondered. The blackbirders would steal him, just as they took Big Boy.’

‘He ought to be safe in a cage,’ Hal suggested.

The young bull would not enter a cage until Roger went in first -then he followed quite willingly. Roger slipped out again and locked the door.

The bull complained loudly and thrust his trunk out between the slats. Roger gently stroked the trunk until the animal accepted his lot and settled down.

Then Roger made the door doubly secure with another padlock.

‘I’d like to see them try to open that,’ he said.

‘But we’ll take no chances,’ said Hal. ‘Well post guards.’

Since the safari men were dog-tired. Chief Mumbo supplied the guards. Two tough Watussi armed with spears took their place before the cage door.

The cry made by an excited elephant is like nothing else on earth.

You may call it a scream, but that’s only the half of it You may call it a shriek. But it is much more than that It is not like the roar of a lion or the bellow of a buffalo or the snort of a rhino.

Put all these together and you still don’t have it It begins deep down in the cavernous inside of the world’s largest land animal, and goes up and up until it seems it must split your head open. It is a combination of deep thunder, the rip of a circular saw through a knot, the deafening din of an iron foundry and the rising screech of a fire siren or air-raid siren. It chills your spine and makes the skin creep on the ends of your fingers.

However you describe it it is bound to wake the soundest sleeper. And when it came just before dawn it ripped Roger’s eyes open and left him tingling as if he had touched a high-tension wire.

For a moment he lay frozen. Then he wrenched himself out of bed and ran out to see what had happened 10 his young bull elephant

Near the cage door he stumbled over something and fell. Under him was the still-warm body of one of the guards. He felt for the pulse. The man was dead. A few feet away his groping hands found the other guard, also dead.

Hal was with him now. Men began to come out of the tents of the camp and the huts of the village. The elephant was still tearing the night apart with all the power of his steam-boiler lungs.

The truck on which the cage rested squeaked and groaned as the wildly charging animal crashed against one side and then the other of his cage.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Hal wondered.

‘Probably frightened by the blackbirders.’

Roger felt for the locks. One of them had been picked open. The other had held fast.

Roger ran back to the tent and got the key. Then he proceeded to unlock the cage door.

‘What’s the idea?’ Hal asked.

‘He’s had a bad scare,’ Roger said. ‘I’m going to go in there and quiet him down.’

‘Hell kill you.’

‘No he won’t He knows me.’

He slipped inside the cage.

‘Whoa, boy. There, there. It’s all right’

He was surprised to find that his words had no effect Perhaps the elephant was making too much noise to be

able to hear him. The rampaging beast knocked him over. He got unsteadily to his feet just in time to be jammed hard against the cage wall. A little more pressure and his ribs would have cracked under the strain.

He felt for the trunk. If he could stroke that he might

quiet the frenzied beast. ^r’

He found an ear, and then a tusk. Then his hand was where the trunk should be, but there was no trunk. Instead, a sticky liquid that smelled like blood was spattering his hand.

Reaching a little higher, he touched raw, wet flesh. This then was what was left of the trunk.

In a flash he understood. The blackbirders, after killing the two guards, had tried to steal the elephant But they had been unable to undo one of the locks. The young bull, seeking a friend, had put his trunk out between the slats just as he had done the night before. Hie blackbirders, furious because they could not steal the animal and sell it to some wealthy sheik, had ruined it so it would be of no use to anyone. No zoo would want a trunkless elephant.

They doubtless knew that no other part of the animal is so sensitive as the trunk. Cutting it off would mean terrible pain, and the animal would go wild and perhaps kill its keepers.

Roger leaped for the door. He must get out fast before he was crushed against the slats or trampled underfoot

He got out fast - thanks to a pair of tusks that scooped him out of the door and flung him fifteen feet to fetch up head first against a big rock. He fell limp and bloody to the ground.

Hal pulled him out of the way as the insane bull rushed from the cage and began laying about him at everything and everybody within reach.

Men, women, and children scattered like leaves before a hurricane. Many were knocked down and badly hurt

Mad with pain, the bull attacked the huts, tearing open the papyrus walls with his tusks, tossing the thatch of the roofs high in the air, and trampling upon anyone who happened to be inside.

Suddenly there was the crash of a heavy gun and the bull dropped in his tracks.

In the faint beginning of dawn Roger saw the gun in Hal’s hands. At that moment he bitterly hated his brother.

‘What did you do that for?’

‘What else was there to do?’

‘If you’d given me a few more minutes,’ Roger said, ‘I could have quieted him.’

‘A few more minutes, and a lot of people would have been killed. He was crazy with pain. It was better to end his suffering.’

‘We have drugs,’ Roger objected. ‘We could have stopped the pain - and bandaged up the trunk. In a few weeks he’d have been as good as new.’

‘Listen, kid,’ Hal said patiently, ‘I know how you feel. But it’s better this way. You know well enough that he’d never grow a new trunk. And the stump would never stop hurting, even if he lived to be a hundred. That’s because it’s just one solid mass of nerves. He’d be a killer all the rest of his life. And how do you suppose he’d feed himself without a trunk? How would he drink? He couldn’t live in the wilds - and he couldn’t live in a zoo, because no zoo would take him. Think it over.’

The villagers were already attacking the body with knives, rejoicing in the opportunity to stuff themselves with the tender meat. It made Roger sick to watch them. The young bull had been his friend. Now he was only meat

Roger had lost him, and he had lost Big Boy. Everything had gone wrong. All the big elephants they had tackled - they hadn’t been able to take one. The expedition was a failure. He could almost believe there was some evil spell over these crazy mountains. It had been just one bitter disappointment after another, and now his brother had made it more than bitter.

He looked angrily at Hal. But when he saw his brother’s unhappy face, he suddenly realized that Hal must be just as sad about this whole business as he was. Perhaps sadder, because Hal was responsible for the success of the project But Hal had not complained.

Roger regretted his angry remarks. He put his hand on Hal’s arm.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

Hal grinned. That’s okay. Keep your chin up. We may come out on top yet.’

Over a hearty breakfast of antelope steak, cornmeal pancakes, and coffee, they discussed the events of the night with Joro.

‘I’ve never known anything quite so cruel,’ Hal said ‘Cutting off that young beast’s trunk! Just in spite. They couldn’t steal him, so they spoiled him. They knew he’d go mad, and they hoped he’d kill the lot of us. What devils they must be! You know, I was keen to get elephants. Well, I still am, but I’d like even better to get bold of that gang of cut-throats. They must have made plenty of tracks last night. Do you think we could follow them?’

Joro shook his head. ‘It would be as it was yesterday. They would lead us to water and there we would lose them,’

‘If we only knew where to look!’ Hal said. ‘But this mountain region is about as big as all England.’

‘And the going isn’t easy,’ Roger added. ‘No nice paved roads - nothing but bogs and lakes and jungles and cliffs and glaciers.’

‘Anyhow,’ Hal said wearily, ‘we’ve got to keep trying.’ There was not too much hope in his voice. ‘Tell the men to be ready to start in an hour.’

Roger suddenly went up from his camp stool like a rocket, upsetting the folding table and what was left of the breakfast.

‘Look!’ he cried. ‘It’s Big Boy.’

The baby elephant was just emerging from the forest He stopped and looked about. Then he saw Roger. He trumpeted loudly and came as fast as his stubby legs would carry him.

Roger ran to meet him. They collided so hard that Roger was nearly knocked down.

‘You old stumblebum!’ he cried. Big Boy squealed with pleasure and wrapped his trunk around Roger’s neck in a choking embrace. A crowd gathered like magic. Everybody was happy because Roger was happy.

Everybody but Chief Mumbo.

‘My son?’ he said. ‘My son did not come with him?’

All eyes turned to the forest. There was no sign of little Bo. Only the elephant had escaped from the black’ birders’ camp. With the remarkable homing instinct possessed by so many mammals and birds, he had found bis way back to Roger.

He was somewhat the worse for wear. His hide bore several bruises where he had perhaps been kicked by the heavy boots of the Thunder-man or beaten with sticks. He was well muddied by his journey and Roger took him into the lake for a bath, scrubbing his hide all over, particularly behind the ears and in any cracks or folds where ticks had attached themselves.

Then boy and beast came out, both trumpeting, and Big Boy was served a breakfast of milk, milk, and more milk. He put away so much of it that it was plain he must have been half starved in the camp of the blackbirders.

They must be punished. Bo must be rescued. But how could their camp be found? It would do no good to follow the blackbirders’ tracks.

But how about the tracks of Big Boy? That was it Full of sudden enthusiasm, he proposed the idea to Joro.

Joro nodded thoughtfully.

‘Maybe good,’ Joro said. ‘Maybe good.’

So when the expedition started out, it ignored the footprints of the night visitors and followed those of the baby elephant. The idea had been Roger’s, but toe tracking was Joro’s, and he performed it with great skill. Even when the trail was confused by the prints of other elephantine feet, including those of the young, Joro was able to pick out the footprints of Big Boy.

They led to Green Lake, but did not vanish in the water. Instead, they followed the shore, not towards Beego Bog, but to the right, round the east end of the lake, then past the waterfall and up the steep slope to the next terrace or balcony, where Black Lake sulked under heavy clouds. Here were giant palms, giant mimosa and grass eight feet high. A super-size rhino was feeding on a super-size nettle, munching the three-inch-long spikes of the nettle with as much pleasure as if they had been so much ice cream and cake. Mammoth groundsels flowered along the edge of the lake.

It was all so unreal that Roger said, ‘I must be dreaming.’

‘Your dream takes you back about three million years,’ Hal said. This is the way it was at that time over much of Africa. Down on the Serengeti Plain not far from here archaeologists have discovered the fossil remains of giant pigs, giant sheep, giant ostriches, a tremendous baboon, and a rhino twice as large as the ones to be found there today. Africa was a land of giants. Now the giants are

gone - except in these mountains.’

‘I still don’t quite understand,’ Roger said, ‘why the giants disappeared everywhere else but stayed on here.’

‘Nobody has come up with a good answer to that one. Of course, the daily rain has a lot to do with it. That makes the plants grow, and where there is plenty to eat the animals grow too. But that’s not the whole story. Perhaps part of the answer is that this is a sort of island shut away from the world. People are destructive - but few people have ever found their way here. Then there’s something about the soil. They say that because this region .has never been ripped up by volcanic action it has had the same kind of soil for ages. Anyhow, no matter what the reason, here you are living three million years ago. How does it feel?’

‘Spooky,’ said Roger.

The heavy fog turned into drizzle, and the drizzle into rain, and the rain into a cloudburst thundering down with such force that in ten minutes the tracks of the baby elephant were completely wiped out

The rain suddenly stopped. The men came together and looked in vain for more tracks. From the unseen mountains came a last ripple of thunder like a giant’s laugh.

Joro ordered the men to make a circle about a hundred feet in diameter around the spot where he stood and examine every inch of ground. They did so, gradually working their way in to the centre. They found nothing. They sat down on the damp ground.

Again came that rumbling chuckle from the hidden mountains.

‘Are you going to stay here and be laughed at?’ demanded Hal ‘You are men, not children. Those you look for, they also are only men, not gods. You don’t need to be afraid of them. They must be somewhere - they can’t vanish into thin air. We can find them. Let us break up into teams - two men in each team. Each team will go out from this point in a different direction like the spokes of a wheel. We will go over this country with a fine-tooth comb. At noon we will come back to this place and tell what we have seen.’

The men shook their heads wearily and muttered under their breath, but they obeyed. Joro appointed the teams. Each team set out towards a different point of the compass, except back to camp. Hal and Roger, constituting a team, started due north.

Their route took them up another steep slope among monster plants with hairy arms and flowers that looked like daisies but were as big as dinner plates. Moss which should have been nothing more than a soft carpet under their feet stood as high as Roger’s head. They fought their way through it for a few yards and then stopped.