He jerked his thumb behind us. I thought he was joking. The slope we had been walking along was so steep that it made you feel that you would have been happier if one of your legs had been three foot longer than the other, but behind us rose something as sheer, as unfriendly, and as dangerous-looking as the Jungfrau in a heat wave, devoid alike, as far as one could see, of both foot and hand-holds.
‘I was growing to like you, Tony, ‘I said, ‘but you really must try to curb this macabre sense of humour you display. If anyone took you seriously, someone of my noble proportions and youthfulness, for example, he might easily suffer a cardiac arrest by dwelling on your facetious remark.’
‘I’m not joking,’ said Tony. ‘It’s the best way up, and it’s quite easy if you zig-zag.’
‘Zig-zag,’ said Dave. What sort of a God-damned nonsense is that? You’d have to be a mountain goat with adhesive feet to zig-zag up that.’
‘I assure you, it’s not nearly as bad as it looks,’ said Tony, firmly. We forgot the oxygen mask,’ said Wahab, ‘so if we hold our breath until the top, it will help.’
‘I cannot think why I associate with you all,’ I said. And I can’t think why I was stupid enough to come to this place in the first place.’
‘You wouldn’t have missed this, would you?’ asked John, incredulously, as if I had uttered a blasphemy.
‘No,’ I admitted, as I got to my feet and picked up my camera. ‘I probably wouldn’t. They say there’s no fool like an old fool.’
We started tacking up the precipitous slope. Reluctant though we were to admit it, we found that Tony was right, and that which had seemed unclimbable, when viewed from below, became more or less possible if we zig-zagged like a drunken centipede. Here and there, we were startled by loud, belligerent, witch-like screams, apparently issuing from the bowels of the earth. These proved to be caused by Red-tailed tropic birds, sitting in their nesting cavities under the slabs of lava, endeavouring to frighten us away. They were the size of small gulls, with tern-like heads, large, melting eyes and sealing-wax-red beaks. The plumage on the head, breast and wing butts was a delicate, glittering, pale rose-pink, as if they had been bathed in some vat of ethereal dye. When their maniacal screams proved to be unsuccessful in frightening us off, they just sat there and stared at us. It is this stupid habit of sitting still and accepting their fate that is the chief reason for their slaughter, for they are an easy prey for the fishermen who land on Round Island to kill them and take their bodies back to Mauritius, where they are sold to the Chinese restaurants.
The summit seemed unreachable. Every time we breasted a slope, thinking it was the top, another wall of rock faced us. At last we really did arrive at a completely flat area covered with slabs of rock, lying scattered about as if dropped haphazardly from the skies. It was a much hotter terrain than the cliff-sides, since nothing but sparse mats of convolvulus grew between the rocks, and not even the most spindly of pandanus provided shade. Here there were no guntheri, but instead small skinks, some four-and-a-half inches in length, with a long tail and pointed head, and such small legs they looked almost snake-like. They slithered like drops of quick-silver, their movements baffling the eye, as quick as a humming-bird’s.
‘Well, will you look at these? Will you just look at these?’ panted Dave. ‘Aren’t these the smallest God-damned things you’ve ever seen? Aren’t they the cutest little fellas?’
The skinks, bright-eyed, fluid and quick as raindrops on a window, continued their never-ending movement, oblivious of the lavish praise that was being bestowed upon them. Their smooth, shiny scales, pale-green and coffee-coloured, shone in the sunshine, and they did not deviate from the stern task of food hunting, except to hurl themselves at each other in mock combat, should their paths cross. Dave wiped his hands on his trousers, took a firm grip on the lizard stick, and approached a rather large and well-built skink which was going through the crevices of a rock with all the thoroughness of a Scotland Yard detective searching a tenement building for drug smugglers. His efficiency and dedication to duty would have won him a recommendation from any Chief of Police. He took no notice whatsoever as Dave loomed over him.
‘Come along, then, little fella,’ crooned Dave, noose dangling expectantly. ‘Come on, then.’
He dangled the noose in front of the lizard and the glitter of the nylon caught its eye. It paused and raised its head and Dave deftly slipped the noose round its neck, pulled it tight, and lifted. You might as well have tried to catch a rainbow. The smooth scales formed a polished surface for the nylon to slide on, and the weight of the lizard’s body slid its head out of the noose with no difficulty. The lizard, which had been lifted and then dropped some six inches, was completely unperturbed by his brief flight. He paused to lick his lips thoroughly and then proceeded on his insect hunting as if nothing had happened. Twice more, Dave got the noose over his head and twice more it slipped off, as if the skink had been buttered.
‘God damn it, the little bastards are as slippery as a barrel of lard,’ said Dave, mopping his face. ‘Did you ever see anything so damned agile? And the little bastard’s not scared, either. Are you, you son of a gun? Now, are you going to let Dave catch you, or aren’t you, little fella?’
Thus adjured, the lizard paused, licked his lips, yawned in Dave’s face and continued on his quick, excited hunt for six-legged comestibles. Four more times, Dave attempted to catch the skink, and four more times he failed. The amusing thing was that the skink seemed totally oblivious to the fact that he kept making short journeys into space; whenever he slid out of the noose and landed with a thump, he resumed his hunting, unflurried and with unabated enthusiasm.
In the end, since it was obvious that the noose would not work on such an apparently liquid species, John caught him by hand. We unanimously agreed that this was the best (if the most exhausting) way of doing it. We’d been employing this method for some time, when I became aware of an almost total lack of shade on the summit. There were no trees, and the only shadows were cast by the tumbled landscape of rocks, but now it was getting on for midday, and the sun was almost vertical above us, so that the shade the rocks were producing was negligible. I became worried about our bags, full of precious guntheri; so it was decided that I would leave the others hunting, and make my way back to the picnic tree, which would provide enough shade for our precious specimens. So I departed, carrying the bundle of cloth bags in the shade of my body, leaving the others quartering the hot, dry terrain like hounds, shouting to each other: ‘Look out! He’s going under there.’ ‘Quick! Quick! Get on the other side as he comes out,’ and: ‘Hell! I can’t turn the bloody rock over.’
Slowly, picking my way among the tumbled boulders, I made my way along the spine of the island until I felt that I was more or less opposite the picnic tree site. Then, I approached the precipitous slope and looked for the Dorade as a landmark. While we’d been stupid enough to leave the safety of the boat and blunder about in the sun after a load of lizards, the Henley regatta crowd had done no such thing; they had paid a visit to a reef some half a mile away to indulge in cool underwater swimming and fishing. As I looked down the hillside to the sea, I could see the Dorade, white and trim, looking about the size of a matchbox, steaming towards the landing spot. I made my way a short distance down the slope and found a young palm tree that was giving something approximating to shade. There I squatted, sheltering my precious cargo, watching the Dorade and waiting for her to anchor, so that I could get my bearings. From the top of the island, the whole terrain looked completely different, and I could not see the picnic tree at all. As I had no desire to walk farther than was necessary in that blistering heat, I thought that I would wait for the Dorade to act as a marker. Presently she chugged from the royal blue and purple deep sea into the jay’s-wing blue and jade-green of the shallow water, and dimly I heard her anchor rattle overboard. I mopped my face, hoisted my camera on to my shoulder, picked up my bags of geckos and started down towards the sea.