Gerald Durrell - The Overloaded Ark

“Elias,” I called, “na beef for here, but I no get chance to catch um. Give me one end of your cloth, then I get something to hold, and I fit catch um. . . .”

Elias at once unwound the cloth from his waist and, holding on to one end, lowered the other down to me. It was far too short. I cursed myself for not having brought any rope.

“Get Andraia’s cloth and tie the two together,” I instructed.

A frenzied argument broke out as I waited. Apparently Andraia was a modest man and did not relish the idea of standing on the top of a waterfall stark naked. At length the cloths reappeared, with a large knot in the middle. I took hold of them and was thus able to release one hand for the purpose of capturing the toad. I then discovered that this creature, while my attention was engaged, had hopped along a ledge, and was now about six feet away from me. Hanging on to the cloth I edged after him. He had perched himself at a place where the cliff bulged out, so that I was compelled to hang out over the waters, almost my entire weight being supported by the cloth. Offering up a brief prayer I made a wild grab and caught the toad by the hind leg. The movement of my grab swung me out in an arc over the pool below, and instinctively I looked upwards to make sure all was well at the top. To my horror I saw the large knot which joined the two cloths start to disintegrate. I reached my former position just as the cloths parted. Andraia, peering over the edge, was treated to the sight of his cloth whizzing merrily round and round the miniature whirlpool below.

When we had all reached the top safely, after rescuing Andraia’s cloth, I sat down to examine the toad. My feelings can be imagined when I found that my rare specimen was, in reality, the commonest form of toad in the Cameroons, one who had changed his normal colour for this bright livery because the breeding season was near. I released him sadly, and watched him hop off into the undergrowth with slow measured leaps, and an astonished look on his face.

We moved along the stream, which now flowed a broken and foam-whitened course between large boulders, keeping a hopeful look-out for more crocodiles. Presently we succeeded in catching two more. Then we waded for an hour and saw nothing. Once a pair of eyes gleamed for a brief second in a tree above us, but we could not find their owner when we searched. Amos had now become tired and waded far behind, uttering at intervals a loud mournful groan. I knew that this was not a complaint, only his way of keeping his spirits up, but it annoyed me none the less, and my mind was filled with dark thoughts of what I would like to do to him. Elias and Andraia were wading ahead, and I followed carrying their forked sticks, thus leaving their hands free to manoeuvre the torches. Soon, as we had not seen a living thing for what seemed hours, I did a very silly thing: in a fit of exasperation I threw the sticks away, thinking that we could always cut more should the need arise. Not long afterwards Elias came to a sudden halt and, keeping the torch beam steady on something he had seen, he groped behind him with his free hand and implored me to hand him his stick. I replied that I had lost them.

“Eh . . . aehh!” muttered Elias in righteous indignation, and he drew his machete and crept forward; I peered to see what it was that he was stalking, and saw something long and dark lying on the sandbank ahead, something which was the size and shape of a small crocodile and which glinted in the light like one. Elias crept near, and then made a sudden dive, trying to pin it to the sand with his machete blade, but it wriggled through his legs, plopped into the water and swam at great speed towards Andraia. He jumped at it as it passed, but it put on a spurt of speed and shot towards me like a miniature torpedo. By now I was convinced it was a crocodile, so, waiting until it came level, I flung myself into the water on top of it. I felt its body give a convulsive wriggle against my chest, but as I grabbed at it, it slid through my fingers like oil. Now no one stood in its path to freedom except Amos. Elias, Andraia, and I lifted up our voices and yelled instructions to him. He stood there with his mouth open, watching its approach. It was level with him, churning a small wake in the stream, and then it was past him and making for the sanctuary of a tangle of boulders and still he stood and watched it.

“Arrrrr!” roared Elias. “You blurry fool, you. Why you no catch um?”

“I see um,” said Amos suddenly, “he go for under dat stone. . . .”

The three of us rushed down towards him in a tidal wave of foam and water, and Amos pointed out the rock under which the quarry was lurking. This was by the bank, in shallow water, and under it was the hole in which the creature had taken refuge. Elias and Andraia, in their eagerness, both bent down at the same time to examine this hole, and banged their heads together with a resounding clump. After a short pause for abuse, Andraia bent down and pushed his hand into the hole to see how large it was. The creature had apparently been waiting for such a move, for he withdrew his hand with a cry of anguish, his forefingers dripping blood.

“This beef can bite man,” said Elias, with the air of having made a discovery.

Andraia was at last persuaded, since he had the longest arm, to put his hand back in the hole and drag out the beef by force, but not before he and Elias had had a long and shrill altercation with each other in Banyangi, and accusations of cowardice had been made and indignantly denied. Andraia lay down on his tummy in six inches of water and insinuated his hand into the bowels of the earth, explaining all the time how clever he was to do this. Then there was a short silence, broken only by his frenzied grunts in his efforts to reach the beast. Suddenly he gave a yell of triumph, scrambled to his feet dripping with water, and holding the beast by its tail.

Now, up to that moment, I had been convinced that we were attempting the capture of yet another baby crocodile, so as I gazed at the creature which now hung from his hand I received a considerable shock. For there, dangling in the torchlight, sleek and angry, hissing like a snake out of a quivering maze of whiskers, was a full-grown Giant Water Shrew, an animal that I had never expected to find. I could do nothing intelligent, I just stood there gazing at this fabulous creature with my mouth open. The shrew, however, got tired of hanging by his tail, so he turned and climbed up his own body with sinewy grace, and buried his teeth in Andraia’s thumb. The proud hunter leapt wildly into the air and uttered an ear-splitting scream of pain: “Ow! . . . Ow! . . . Ow! . . ” he screamed, wagging his hand in an effort to dislodge the shrew. “Oh, Elias, Elias, get it off. . . . Ow! My JESUSCRI . . . it done kill me. . . . Ow! . . . Ow! . . . Ow! . . . Elias, quickly!” Elias and I struggled with the shrew to make it let go, but it seemed quite content to hang there, occasionally tightening its jaws to show it was still taking part in the contest. After prolonged effort, during which Andraia nearly deafened us with his cries of pain and calls for aid to the Almighty, we succeeded in prising the shrew loose, and dropped it, hissing and wriggling, into a canvas bag. Then I examined Andraia’s hand: the whole first joint of his thumb was a mass of blood, and when I had washed this away I found that he had been badly mangled by the creature’s teeth. It had bitten through the ball of his thumb right down to the bone, the flesh was hanging off in strips, and the wounds were bleeding profusely. I decided that we should return home, partly owing to Andraia’s thumb, which must have been exceedingly painful, and also because I wanted to get my new specimen into a decent cage as soon as possible. So we walked swiftly back to the village, the groans emitted by Amos and Andraia giving the whole trek the air of a funeral procession rather than a triumphant homecoming.