Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

Crawling round frantically on all fours I eventually found the torch and switched it on, shining the beam at Ivan's hammock. As I did so his face rose over the side, and he peered at us sleepily.

"What's the matter, sir?" he inquired.

"Where's the cumoodi?" I demanded.

"Cumoodi?" said Ivan, looking alarmed.

"Is there a cumoodi?"

"Well, I don't know. It was your idea," I pointed out, "you were yelling that a cumoodi was climbing into the boat."

"I was, sir?"

"Yes."

Ivan looked sheepish.

"I must have been dreaming," he said.

We all glared at him, and he retreated into his hammock in some confusion. I learned later that Ivan, when excited by thoughts of cumoodis, was apt to have these nightmares, during which he would scream and lash about wildly, successfully waking everyone but himself. He did it several times afterwards, but by then we had become used to it, and he never again succeeded in wreaking such havoc as he did that night in the boat. Eventually we managed to disentangle our hammocks, refused Mr. Kahn's offer to tell us another cumoodi story and managed to get to sleep.

Just before dawn I awoke to find that we were already on our way down to the river mouth. The engine throbbed gently as the boat headed down the great smooth stretch of tree lined water, slate grey in the dawn light. I scrambled up on to the roof and sat there admiring the view. The air was cool and full of the scents of leaves and flowers. As the light strengthened the sky turned from grey to green, the remaining stars trembled and went out, and a mist rolled up from the surface of the river, coiling and shifting across the surface and among the trees on the bank with a slow-motion, underwater grace, like giant fronds of white seaweed moved by the waves. The sky faded from green to a very pale blue, and through the gaps in the forest I could see a tattered regiment of vermilion clouds where the sun was rising. The sound of our engines echoed and re-echoed down the silent river, and the bows cut through the smooth waters with a soft silken swish. We rounded a bend and came to the end of the river; there in front stretched the sea, grey and choppy in the morning light. A dead tree lay on the bank, half in the water, the bark hanging off it in strips, showing the sun-bleached trunk beneath. Among its branches sat a pair of scarlet this looking like some giant red and pink blooms growing on the dead tree. As we drew closer they flapped up, circling lazily, glowing pink, red, and scarlet in the sunlight, and flew off up the river with slow flaps, their long curved beaks stuck out ahead like lances.

On leaving the river mouth we had to cross a mile or so of open sea before turning shore wards again at the entrance to the creeks. The vast quantity of river water flowing out to meet the sea created a swirling, choppy area of water, and our boat bounced and bucked from wave to wave like a skimming stone, while a stiff breeze threw curtains of fine spray over us. A flock of pelicans flew by us in elegant V-formation and landed some fifty yards away with ungainly splashes. They tucked their beaks into their chests and stared at us with their usual benevolent expressions. From that distance, bobbing up and down on the waves, they looked ridiculously like a troop of celluloid ducks in a dirty bath.

Presently the boat turned and headed for land. As far as I could see there did not appear to be any opening in the line of forest along the shore, and I merely thought that the boatman wanted to hug the land in case the waves got worse; the boat after all, had not been built for sea work. But we headed straight for the trees, and they came nearer and nearer, and still the boat did not turn. Just as I thought we were about to run aground we twisted under the branches of a tree, the undergrowth closed behind us, shutting out the sound of the sea, and we were chugging slowly up a narrow, placid creek into a new world.

The creek was some twenty feet wide, with high banks that were thickly covered with undergrowth. The twisted trees, leaning out over the water to form a tunnel, had their branches and trunks festooned with lichen, long waterfalls of grey Spanish moss, rich patches of pink and magenta orchids and a host of other green climbing plants. The water at the edges of the creek was invisible under a tangled mat of water plants covered with a host of tiny, colourful flowers. This beautifully patterned carpet of leaves and flowers was broken here and there by patches of water-lily leaves, like shining green plates, grouped round their spiky pink and white flowers. The creek water was deep and clear, a rich tawny sherry colour. In this trough of vegetation the air was still and hot, and we sat on the roof of the boat basking drowsily in the sun and watching new scenes unfold as the boat followed the twisting, lazy course of the creek.

At one point the creek had cheerfully overflowed its banks and the waters had covered several acres of a valley. This was a drowned landscape, and the boat zigzagged through a small wood of trees that had remained standing in ten feet of brown water, their trunks ringed with weeds and lilies. A small cayman was sunning himself on a grassy bank; he lay with his jaws slightly apart in an evil grin, and when he saw us he lifted his head, snapped his jaws shut and slid hastily down the bank and plunged through the mat of weeds that hid the edge of the water, leaving a jagged hole in the green. Further along the bank had been scooped out into a series of gently curving bays, and in each lay a fringe of pink water-lilies lying motionless on the dark, polished water. The lily leaves formed a green flagged pathway across the water, meandering carelessly from one point to another, dotted with flowers. Across one of these natural bridges we watched a female jacana leading her brood of fluffy, newly-hatched chicks, each not much bigger than a walnut.

The jacana resembles an English moorhen except for its long slender legs ending in a bunch of fragile, greatly elongated toes. As we watched this bird we realized how useful these delicate toes are. She stepped cautiously from lily-pad to lily-pad, placing her weight carefully in the centre of each leaf, and her toes spreading out like the legs of a spider, distributing her weight evenly. The leaves dipped and trembled slightly as she stepped on them, but that was all.

Her chicks, like a swarm of gold and black bumblebees, scuttled after her; their weight was so slight that they could all congregate on one leaf without altering its position in the water. The jacana led them across the bridge of lily-pads swiftly and carefully, the babies trotting behind, stopping obediently when their mother was testing the next leaf. When they reached the end of the lilies the female dived into the water and the babies plopped after her, one by one, leaving only a few silver bubbles and a dipping leaf to show where they had been.

At the end of the valley the creek waters dutifully reentered their appointed bed and flowed through a section of thickly wooded countryside. The trees grew closer and closer, until we were travelling in green twilight under a tunnel of branches and shimmering leaves, on water that was as black as ebony, touched in places with silver smears of light where there were gaps in the branches overhead.

Suddenly a bird flew from a tree opposite to us and sped up the dim tunnel, to alight on the trunk of another tree that was spotlighted with sunshine. It was a great black woodpecker with a long, curling wine-red crest and an ivory-coloured beak. As it clung to the bark, peering at us, it was joined by its mate, and together they started to scuttle up and down the tree trunk, tapping it importantly with their beaks and listening with their heads on one side.

Occasionally they would utter a short burst of shrill, metallic laughter, tittering weirdly over some private joke between themselves. They looked like a couple of mad, redheaded doctors, sounding the chest of the great tree and giggling delightedly over the disease they found, the worm holes, the tubercular patches of dry rot, and the army of larvae steadily eating their host to pieces. The woodpeckers thought it a rich jest.