Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

"That should do," said McTurk, examining his handiwork with justifiable pride.

"We'll see what we get tonight."

The sun was setting when we went down and baited the trap.

McTurk was of the opinion that if we caught a cayman at all we would not do so until late that night. So Bob and I decided to take a last walk across the savannah to get the smell of fish out of our lungs. The sky was barred with pale pink clouds on a jade green background, and a distant line of mountains stood out against it like the curved black backs of a line of leaping dolphins. In the long, crisp grass the crickets were making musical-box noises to one another, and in the distance, from the reeds by the river, we could hear the great frogs coughing their nightly chorus. A pair of burrowing owls flapped up from under our feet and flew thirty paces away on silent wings; they settled and watched us nervously, pacing a solemn circle and twisting their heads round and round. We lay on the red earth, warm as fire, and gazed up at the sky. It changed from green to dove-grey as the sun slid under the rim of the world, and then suddenly it was black and trembling with enormous stars seeming so close that, from where we lay, we could reach up and gather handfuls from the sky.

The moon was up when we made our way back to the house. We had decided to take our hammocks down to the river and sling them among the trees so that we should hear if we caught anything in the trap. We found suitable trees, slung our hammocks and then went back to the house for supper. After food and a smoke we strolled down towards the river in the moonlight, a dozen small bats drawing intricate geometrical patterns in the warm air above our heads. As we drew near the river I thought I heard a sound.

"What's that?" I asked Bob.

"What's what?" he replied.

"A sort of banging noise."

"I didn't hear anything." We walked on in silence.

"There it is again. Can't you hear it?"

"I can hear something." admitted Bob.

"I think we've caught something," I said, starting to run towards the river.

As I reached the bank I could see the trap rope stretched taut from the tree branch. I switched on the torch, and the rope started to vibrate and dip, and from the base of the small cliff there arose a fearsome noise, a combination of snorts, splashings and loud thuds. I ran to the edge of the cliff and looked down.

Ten feet below me the boats that had formed the sides of the trap had been pushed wide apart, and in the water between them lay one of the largest cayman I have ever seen, with the noose firmly tied round his neck. He was lying quietly after his last spasm, but as soon as the torch beam picked him out a shudder ran through his gigantic body and he curved himself up like a bow, his great blunt mouth opened aod then snapped shut like a door, his tail swept from side to side in a whirlpool of foam and water, and with each stroke it hit the boats with an echoing thud. In the swirling water between the rocking boats the huge reptile rolled and snapped and beat at the boats with his tail, while the rope twanged and thrummed and the branch to which it was attached creaked ominously. The tree was next to where I stood on the small cliff, and placing my hand on the trunk I could feel it vibrating with the cayman's struggles.

In my excitement I was obsessed with the idea that this magnificent reptile might, in his struggles, break the rope or the branch and escape, so I did something so futile and dangerous that even now I cannot realize how I came to act so stupidly; I leant forward over the cliff edge, seized the rope with both hands and pulled hard. The cayman, feeling the tug, rolled and lashed again, so that the rope was pulled taut. I was pulled forward, so that I found myself with only my toes on the edge of the cliff and my body hanging out into space at an angle of forty-five degrees, ten feet above the rocking boats and the snapping and infuriated reptile. I should have fallen, eventually, straight down into the water, to be bitten by the cayman or more probably lashed to death by its tail, if Bob had not arrived at that moment and laid hold of the rope. The cayman rolled and tugged, and we were both jerked backwards and forwards on the cliff edge, clinging madly to the rope as though our lives depended upon it. No drowning man ever clutched a straw with such a grip. Between jerks Bob turned his head.

"What are we hanging on for?"

"In case the rope breaks," I gasped. "He'll get away."

Bob pondered this for a bit.

"But if the rope does break we can't hold him," he pointed out at length. This idea had not occurred to me before, and I suddenly realized how silly we were being. We released our grip on the rope and lay on the grass to recover; below us the cayman fell quiet. We decided that the best thing to do was to get another rope round the beast, in case the first one broke, so we rushed back to the house and woke McTurk; then, armed with ropes, we returned to the river.

The cayman was still lying quietly between the boats; it seemed as though his last struggle had exhausted him. McTurk went into one of the boats alongside him to attract his attention, while I scrambled down the cliff and, with infinite caution, dropped a noose over his jaws and pulled it tight. With his jaws thus out of commission we felt safer, for now we only had his tail to reckon with. We got another noose round his chest and a third one round the thick base of his tail. He rolled about once or twice while we were doing this, but it was a half-hearted effort.

Feeling that he was now more secure with all these additional ropes round him we retired to our hammocks on the banks and slept fitfully until dawn.

The plane was due in at midday, but we had a lot to do before it arrived. The collection, with the exception of the anteater, had to be transported out across the savannah in the jeep and left near the landing strip with an Amerindian in charge. Then we started on the job of getting the cayman well roped up and hauled out on to the bank, where he could be picked up by the jeep when the plane arrived.

The first thing we had to do was to tie his fat and stumpy legs close to his body, and this was easily accomplished; then we had the more difficult job of sliding a long plank underneath him and tying him to it. This took us some time, for he was in shallow water, and most of his body and tail was resting on the mud; in the end we had to float him out to slightly deeper water so that we could get the plank under him. When he was trussed up to the plank we had to haul him out of the water and up the steep bank, and this was a long and laborious process. It took McTurk, Bob, myself, and eight Amerindians an hour to do so. The bank was wet and muddy, and we kept slipping and falling. Each time we fell the cayman's enormous weight would slide him back the few precious inches we had gained. At last, covered with mud and wet with water and sweat, we eased him over the top and slid him to rest on the green grass.

He was about fourteen feet long, his head as broad and as thick as my body, his shining scaly tail like a tree trunk and packed tight with iron-hard muscles. His back and neck were covered with great nodules and bumps, and his tail boasted a tall, serrated crest along it, each triangular scale the width of my palm. His top parts were ash-grey, patched in places with green, where the river slime still clung to him; his belly was bright yellow. His unblinking eyes were as large as walnuts, jet black, and patterned with an intricate and fierce filigree of gold. He was a magnificent creature.

We left him lying in the shade while we went to take the anteater down to the landing strip, for we could hear the distant drone of the plane. The anteater, of course, caused as much trouble as he could, hissing and snorting and lashing out at us as we manhandled him into the jeep and held him quiet while we bumped across the savannah. His uncooperativeness had delayed us, and the plane was landing as we arrived at the strip. I ran forward and found, to my relief, that Smith had sent a large pile of boxes; there was no time to lose, for we had to get the animals boxed up and go back for the cayman.