Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

We waited in our tree for some time in the hope that another arapaima would swim past, but the water below remained unruffled and empty of life. Eventually we climbed down and made our way round to the far side of the lake where the water was shallow. Here McTurk gave us a demonstration of the Amerindian method of fishing. He unhitched a small bow he had been carrying, a frail and useless-looking weapon, and fitted a slender arrow to it.

Then he waded out knee-deep in the dark water and stood motionless for a few minutes. Suddenly he raised the bow, the string thrummed, and the arrow plopped into the water about fifteen feet away from him and stuck there, some five inches of the shaft showing above the surface. Almost instantly the arrow appeared to take on a life of its own: it twitched and trembled, moving fast through the water in a vertical position, tracing a wavering path. After a minute or so, more and more of the shaft showed above the surface, until the arrow tilted and lay almost flat. On the end of it, the barb and part of the shaft through its back, a large silvery fish was gasping its life away in a web of blood.

Now until the fish had risen to the surface I had seen nothing in the water except the twisting arrow; thinking this was because I was on the bank, I waded out and joined McTurk. We waited in silence for a short time, and then McTurk pointed.

"There … by that log … see him?"

I looked at the spot he indicated, but the surface of the water was like a dusty mirror, and I could see nothing. But McTurk could see it, and he raised his bow, discharged another arrow, and soon a second fish floated to the surface, impaled on the slender shaft. Three times I watched McTurk fishing like this, but never once did I see the fish before it came to the surface, on the end of the arrow.

Years of practice had made his eyesight abnormally keen, and he could see the faint blur beneath the water that indicated a fish's position, work out which way it was travelling, allow for deflection, fire his arrow and hit it, all before you could even see any sign of life.

When we returned to the sandbank in the main river where we had left the dinghy, McTurk left us to go on some errand, and Bob and I amused ourselves by looking for more turtles' eggs. Being unsuccessful in this I decided to have a swim.

The sandbank sloped gently into the water, forming a long shelf on which the water was only some six inches deep. It looked fairly safe bathing, and soon Bob joined me.

Presently he called me from further along the shelf, and I found him proudly pointing to some large circular depressions in the sand; if you sat in these holes the water came up to your chin, as if you were reclining in a natural bathtub. We each chose a pot-hole and lay back at ease, singing lustily. Then we capered up and down the sand to get dry, looking like a couple of half witted albino Amerindians.

As we were dressing, McTurk reappeared, and I told him what a wonderful place for bathing the sandbank was.

"Those holes Bob found might have been specially made," I said.

"You're completely covered with water and not out of your depth."

"Holes?" said McTurk. "What holes?"

"Those sort of craters in the sand," explained Bob.

"Have you been sitting in those? asked McTurk.

"Why, yes," said Bob, puzzled. "What's wrong with them?" I asked.

"Nothing, except that they're made by sting rays," said McTurk, "and if you'd sat on one of them you'd have known all about it."

I looked at Bob.

"How big are they?" he asked nervously.

"They generally fit the holes," replied McTurk.

"Good God! The one I was sitting in was almost the size of a bath," I exclaimed.

"Oh, yes," said McTurk, "they grow quite large."

We walked back to the dinghy in silence.

As we headed upstream towards Karanambo the sinking sun turned the river into a shimmering path of molten copper, across which drifted clouds of egrets, like snow. In the placid backwaters the fish were rising, a sudden splash and a hoop of golden ripples across the water. The dinghy chugged round the last bend and nosed her way to her moorings amongst the collection of strange craft; the engine stuttered and died, and silence came back to the river, broken only by the harsh barks of the large toads on the opposite bank.

"Want another swim?" asked McTurk as we stepped out of the boat.

I looked at the twilit river.

"Here?" I inquired.

"Yes, I always bathe here."

"What about piranha?"

"Oh, they won't bother you here."

Thus consoled we undressed and slid into the warm waters, feeling the current tug and vibrate against our bodies. Some thirty feet from the bank I could not touch the bottom by diving and the water six feet down was ice-cold. As we floated there I suddenly heard a harsh snort and a splash from the direction of a small island in the middle of the river, some Hundred and fifty feet away.

"What was that?" I asked McTurk.

"Cayman," he replied laconically. "There are lots of them round here."

"Don't they ever attack?" asked Bob in an offhand manner, treading water and glancing over his shoulder to see how far the bank was.

I glanced shore wards as well, and was quite surprised; only a few minutes previously it had seemed that a couple of powerful strokes would take us back to the beach. Now what appeared to be miles of water separated us from dry land.

McTurk assured us that the cayman never attacked, but we did not feel really safe until we were out on the bank again.

There is something unnerving about lying in fifteen feet of dark water, knowing that down below you there may be electric eels, flocks of hungry piranha in search of supper, or a cruising cayman. When we had dressed, McTurk shone his torch out across the river to where the island lay. With that beam we counted six pairs of eyes, glowing like red-hot coals, dotted about the water.

"Cayman," said McTurk again. "Plenty of them about here. Well, let's go and get some food."

He led the way through the trees towards the house.

To capture a giant anteater had been one of our main reasons for going to the Rupununi, for we had heard that they were much easier to catch in the grassland than in the forests of Guiana.

So for three days after our arrival at Karanambo we did nothing but talk and think about anteaters, until eventually McTurk promised to see what he could do about the matter.

One morning just after breakfast a short, squat Amerindian materialized in front of the house, in the disconcertingly silent way these people do. He had a bronze, Mongolian-looking face, and his dark slit eyes were saved from being crafty by the shy twinkle in them. He was dressed quite simply in the remains of a shirt and pants, and on his sleek black head was perched an absurd pixie hat constructed out of what once used to be velvet. To anyone who had been expecting a fierce warrior, clad in a vivid feather head-dress and daubed tribal signs in clay, he would have been a great disappointment. As it was, he had an air of dour confidence about him, which I found comforting.

"This is Francis," said McTurk, waving at the apparition. "I think he knows where you might find an anteater."

We could not have greeted him more delightedly if he had known the whereabouts of a large reef of gold. And we discovered after some questioning that Francis did know where an anteater was, having seen one some three days before, but whether it was still there or not was another matter. McTurk suggested that Francis should go and see, and, if the creature was still hanging around, he would come and fetch us and we would have a try at catching it. Francis smiled shyly and agreed to the plan. He went off and returned the next morning to say that he had been successful: he had found where the anteater was living, and was willing to lead us there the next day.