Gerald Durrell - THREE SINGLES TO ADVENTURE

"There!" said Bob, "I knew that would happen."

Half-way up the beach the peccary met a small group of Amerindians. He rushed among them, squealing with rage, trying to bite their legs; his sharp, half-inch tusks clicked together at each bite. The Amerindians fled back to the village, hotly pursued by the pig, who was in turn being chased by Ivan and myself. When we reached the huts the inhabitants appeared to have vanished, and the peccary was having a quick snack off some mess he had found under a palm tree. We had rounded the corner of a hut and come upon him rather unexpectedly, but he did not hesitate for a minute.

Leaving his meal he charged straight towards us with champing mouth, uttering a bloodcurdling squeal. The next few moments were crowded, with the peccary twirling round and round, chopping and squealing, while Ivan and I leapt madly about with the speed and precision of a well-trained corps de ballet. At last the pig decided that we were too agile for him, and he retreated into a gap between two of the huts and stood there grunting derisively at us.

"You go round and guard the other end, Ivan," I panted. "I'll see he doesn't get away this side."

Ivan disappeared round the other side of the huts, and I saw Mr. Kahn waddling over the sand towards me. I was filled with an unholy glee. "Mr. Kahn," I called. "Can you come and help for a minute?"

"Surely, Chief," he said, beaming.

"What you want?"

"Just stand here and guard this opening, will you? There's a peccary in there and I don't want him to get out. I'll be back in a second."

Leaving Mr. Kahn peering doubtfully at the peccary, I rushed over to our hut and unearthed a thick canvas bag, which I wrapped carefully round my left hand. Thus armed I returned to the scene of the fray. To my delight I was just in time to see Mr. Kahn panting flatfootedly round the palm trees with the peccary close behind. To my disappointment the pig stopped chasing Mr. Kahn as soon as he saw me and retreated once more between the huts.

"Golly!" said Mr. Kahn. "That pig's plenty fierce, Chief."

He sat down in the shade and fanned himself with a large red handkerchief, while I squeezed my way between the huts and moved slowly towards the peccary. He stood quite still, watching me, champing his jaws occasionally and giving subdued grunts. He let me get within six feet of him, and then he charged. As he reached me I grabbed the bristly scruff of his neck with my right hand and plunged my left, encased in canvas, straight into his mouth. He champed his jaws desperately, but his tusks made no impression through the canvas. I shifted my grip, got my arm firmly round his fat body and lifted him off the ground. As soon as he felt himself hoisted into the air his confidence seemed to evaporate, he stopped biting my hand and started squeaking in the most plaintive manner, kicking out with his fat little hind legs. I carried him over to our hut and deposited him in a box that was strong enough to hold him.

Soon he had his snout buried in a dish full of chopped bananas and milk and was snorting and squelching with satisfaction. Never again did he show off and try to be the Terror of the Jungle; in fact he became absurdly tame. A glimpse of his feeding dish would send him into squealing transports of delight, a frightful song that would only end when his nose was deep in the dish and his mouth full of food. He adored being scratched, and if you continued this treatment for long enough he would heel over and fall flat on his side, lying motionless, with his eyes tightly closed and giving tiny grunts of pleasure. We christened him Percy, and even Bob grew quite fond of him, though I suspect that the chief reason for this was that he had seen him chasing Mr. Kahn round the palm trees.

Poor Mr. Kahn! He tried so desperately to be useful, and to gain some glory, however slight, from the arrival of a new specimen, even though he had nothing whatsoever to do with its capture. But the more he bounced and wobbled and grinned the more irritated we became with him. Ever since he had been chased by Percy he had been grimly determined to recover the prestige he felt sure he had lost during that encounter. He tried very hard to live it down, but Percy was always there, a living, grunting monument to the day when the great hunter Kahn had been soundly routed in full view of us all. One day Mr. Kahn had the chance of covering himself with glory, and he seized it in both fat hands. However, as it turned out the results were not all that he hoped for.

Bob and I had been out on an expedition to the creeks, and we had returned, tired and hungry. As we neared our hut we were surprised to see Mr. Kahn dancing across the sand towards us, exuding triumph and perspiration in equal quantities. His shirt sleeves were rolled up in a workmanlike fashion, his shoes and trousers were sodden with creek water, and he held something in a mysterious fashion behind his back. He skipped towards us, his belly undulating with this unaccustomed activity and his teeth scintillating in the sun.

"Chief," he panted. "Just guess what I got. Just guess. You'll never guess. Something you want. Something you'll go crazy for. I promised to get you one, and here it is."

He held out one huge hand, and in it was a shapeless looking, glutinous object covered with froth. It moved lightly in his grasp. Bob and I looked at it.

"What is it?" inquired Bob at length.

"What is it?" repeated Mr. Kahn, looking hurt. "Why it's one of those carpenter birds that Meester Durrell wanted so much."

"What?" I yelped. "Here, let me have a look."

Mr. Kahn put the strange object into my hands, to which it stuck itself very firmly. On close examination I could see that it was some sort of bird.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked.

Mr. Kahn explained. The woodpecker had, for some reason best known to itself, flown into our hut during the afternoon, and Mr. Kahn, with great presence of mind, had attacked it wildly with a butterfly net. He had pursued it round and round until the poor bird was dizzy, and then, with a lucky swipe, had knocked it down. It was unfortunate that there happened to be a large jar of molasses standing in the hut, for with unerring accuracy the woodpecker fell into the jar with a sticky splash. Nothing daunted, Mr. Kahn had removed the bird from the jar and had carried it, dripping molasses from every feather, down to the creek. There he had proceeded to wash and scrub it vigorously with the aid of a bar of carbolic soap. This object in my hand that looked like a melting honeycomb covered with pink froth had been a very beautiful bird before Mr. Kahn started on it. How it had survived so long I don't know, but the poor thing expired in my hands as Mr. Kahn was proudly finishing his story. When I pointed out that his capture was now a corpse, and a very unattractive one, he was furious and glared at the bird as though it had deliberately flown into the molasses to spite him. For the next two or three days, goaded by our unkind remarks, he prowled around the hut, with the butterfly net in one hand, hoping that he would get the chance of catching another woodpecker, but he was unlucky. After that whenever we wanted to subdue Mr. Kahn we had only to bring the conversation round to peccaries or woodpeckers and he would fall strangely silent.

During our stay in the creek lands we spent at least half our time afloat. We were, in fact, living on an island surrounded on all sides by a network of creeks varying in size and depth, but all running together to form an intricate system of water roads. Thus if we wanted to investigate the country around us we had to do so by water.

During the day we made long excursions to remote Amerindian settlements in the backwaters, and at night we searched the creeks around the village, looking for the local nocturnal fauna.