Gerald Durrell - The Overloaded Ark

“Those bottles down in the store, are they really potassium iodide?” I asked of him eagerly.

“Yes, blasted stuff. They sent it up from Calabar on the last canoe. I can’t think what for, because I can’t sell the stuff,” he replied.

“Well, you’ve just sold the lot,” I said jubilantly.

“What in the name of Heaven do you want with a dozen bottles?” asked the manager, considerably astonished.

I explained at great length.

“But are you sure you want the whole dozen? It’s an awful lot of potassium iodide, you know.”

“If something isn’t done we shan’t have any birds left,” I said, “and I’m not going to take too little and then find, when I come back for more, that you’ve sold out, or something. No, I’ll take the whole lot. How much are they?”

The manager named a price that I would have thought expensive for an iron lung, but I had to have those bottles. Carefully they were packed in the lorry, and I drove back to John in high spirits.

“I’ve got you some potassium iodide, old boy,” I said on arrival, “so now there is no excuse for killing your specimens off.”

“Oh, good work,” said John, and then he gaped at the box I presented to him, “is that all potassium iodide?”

“Yes, I thought I might as well get a supply in. I wasn’t sure how much you would need. Is it enough?”

“Enough?” said John faintly. “There is enough of the stuff here to last fifty collectors approximately two hundred years.”

And so it proved. For months afterwards our baggage was full of bottles of potassium iodide. We couldn’t get rid of the stuff. It hung about and seized every opportunity of upsetting itself on our clean shirts, or cunningly mixing itself with the bicarbonate of soda. But it checked the mycosis, and that was the main thing.

By this time I had almost forgotten about the hunter I had sent the message to about N’da Ali, and I was quite surprised when a messenger appeared one morning from Fineschang. The hunter, I learned, would be very pleased to lead me on a day reconnaissance of the mountain, at any time that would suit me. I decided on a day and sent a message back to say that I would be at Fineschang on that morning. I also sent a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of beer, in case the ju-ju should think that I had overlooked it.

“Ah!” said John, when he heard the news, “so you are going on Thursday. Do you think you are going to be able to get up to the top and back in one day?”

We both looked at the almost sheer cliffs of N’da All gleaming pinkly in the evening sun.

“I think so,” I replied, “at any rate, I’m going to have a damn good try.”

THE day appointed for my mountaineering arrived and dawned bright and clear. N’da Ali was invisible behind a wall of mist; everywhere the forest smoked and steamed, and small hills would appear suddenly out of the mist, like misshapen ships in a fog. What could be seen of the forest was gleaming golden-green in the pale morning sunlight.

I had gaily agreed to be at Fineschang at eleven o’clock. It had not occurred to me until the night before that I had no means of getting to my destination except by walking, and as Fineschang was ten miles away along a hot and dusty road, this idea was uninteresting. Frantic last-minute conferences with the staff had disclosed the fact that a district messenger was staying in the village, and he had with him a shiny new bicycle. The messenger was most helpful, and agreed to lend me his machine; so in the morning sun the great, heavy bicycle was solemnly wheeled up to our hut, and I prepared to depart. I had decided to take Daniel with me, as he was the smallest and lightest of the animal staff, and so could be accommodated on the crossbar. Apart from this passenger I had a large bag of collecting gear, and another one full of sandwiches and beer to sustain me on the journey. As I was tying these on the bicycle John appeared on the scene.

“Why are you taking all that beer?” he inquired.

“Well, to begin with, it’s going to be thirsty work shinning up that mountain, and apart from that I’ve found that beer has a very soothing effect on ju-jus and their owners.”

Daniel approached and eyed me nervously. It was obvious that he had very little faith in my cycling abilities.

“Where I go sit, sah?” he asked.

“Here on the crossbar,” I said.

I leant forward and hauled him up. He clutched wildly at the handlebars and twisted them round, and we fell to the ground in a tangled heap, amid the clanking of beer bottles.

“This does not look to me like the start of a scientific expedition,” said John gravely, “it looks more like an elopement.”

I righted the machine and hauled Daniel aboard, this time without mishap. We wobbled off down the path.

“Bye-bye, old boy,” called John earnestly.

“ ’Bye. . .” I yelled, steering cautiously round the potholes.

“See you to-night,” called John, with complete lack of conviction.

We sped down the hill and shot out on to the high road like a drunken snipe. Here I found the going easier, but my chief difficulty was to get Daniel to loosen his vice-like grip on the handlebars so that I could steer with greater accuracy. Cycling along a Cameroon road is an unforgettable experience: the rich, silky red dust spreads upwards in great clouds enveloping you and your machine; pot-holes of great depth and jagged edges loom suddenly under your front wheel, making you swerve wildly back and forth across the road; every hundred yards or so you come suddenly upon an area which has been liberally sprinkled with rocks of various sizes, and riding across these you feel that a fractured pelvis is the least you can hope to sustain. Every half-mile you crossed a bridge: these consisted of two thick beams laid from bank to bank, with planks laid crossways or, in some cases, length-ways. It was one of the latter type I was silly enough to try and ride over quite early in the trip. My front tyre slid delightedly into the groove between the two planks and stuck there and Daniel, the beer, and I, fell to the ground. By now the sun had come out from the mist and the heat on the open road was terrific. By the time we had reached the half-way mark I was pouring with sweat, and my mouth and eyes were clogged with dust. We swept down a hill, and at the bottom was the inevitable bridge, spanning a wide, shallow stream, with snow-white sandbanks and tall trees grouped round it casting deep shadows. I weakened.

“We go stop here small time, Daniel,” I said hoarsely, “sometime there go be beef for this small water.”

I knew perfectly well that there would be no beef of importance in such a place, but I wanted to soak in the clear glinting waters and get some of the dust off my body. We left the cycle in the ditch and made our way down the slope to the water, where we stripped and plunged in, and watched the red dust washed from our bodies like swirls of blood in the clear waters. Half an hour later we were still sitting in the shallows, relaxed and cool with the waters playing over us, when I suddenly saw a strange thing, which immediately roused me out of my trance. A long brown ribbon of water weed which was attached to the rock near me, detached itself suddenly and swam away. I gazed after it in astonishment, then floundered to my feet with a cry and started in pursuit. The weed swam quickly upstream and went to earth under a small boulder. With Daniel’s aid I shifted the stone and we captured this piece of aquatic flora. Cupped in my hands I held the most extraordinary fish. It was long, narrow, thin, and brown, exactly like a long ribbon of weed. Its face was pulled out into a little snout, and its eyes were round and staring, but they seemed to have more intelligence in them than any ordinary fish’s. I recognized it because I had spent many happy hours hunting its relatives in the weed beds in the Southern Mediterranean. It was a Pipe-fish. I was astonished, for I had not expected to find a freshwater Pipe-fish pretending to be a bit of water weed in an African river. I fashioned a small pool for it and placed it inside. It at once fastened itself to a small rock and turned into a bit of weed, curving and shimmering with the current. I pondered over it unhappily: I longed to know what its habits were, where it laid its eggs and hatched its young, and a hundred other things about it, but I realized mournfully, and not for the first time, that when you are collecting for a living you cannot spend your time unravelling the life history of an obscure fish. Reluctantly, annoyed at the harshness of life, I released the Pipe-fish and watched it swim off into deep water. But the capture of the fish had roused me out of my dream-like trance.