Our two helpers from the Forestry Department, shocked by the fact that we had been out all night during one of the heaviest rainstorms Rodrigues had experienced in eight years, cut poles and banana leaves and constructed for us, well concealed in the bushes, a small banana-leaf hut, something a Congo pigmy might have considered a baronial hall. You cannot, however, look gift huts in the mouth and we decided that, if John left half his legs outside, it would provide us with adequate shelter against the weather.
We took the precaution of visiting the inevitable Chinese stores in Port Mathurin — there did not appear to be any other kind of store — and purchased some plastic sheeting and a few cheap blankets. When dark fell, and the bats had flown past us again, after some considerable argument, it was decided that Ann should go back to the hotel and get a decent night’s sleep and join us again at dawn. When she had departed, John and I made up makeshift beds of plastic sheeting and blankets in our banana-leaf cottage, and arranged our accoutrements — a good supply of sandwiches and chocolate; a Thermos of tea; torches; and a hopeful clutch of small, but delightful, wicker baskets, called Tantes, which are one of Rodrigues’s chief exports, and in which we hoped to incarcerate our catch of bats. We tossed for who should keep the first watch and I won, so I curled up happily and was soon asleep.
When it was my turn to assume sentry duty, I went for a short walk around the clearing to stretch my legs. The earth and vegetation were still saturated with moisture, although it had not rained for some hours, and the air was warm and so water-laden that each breath you took made you feel as though your lungs were absorbing moisture like a sponge. On the fallen and rotting branches that lay about, I found innumerable small, phosphorescent fungi that glowed with a bright greenish-blue light, so that part of the forest floor was illuminated like a city seen from the air at night. I collected some of these twigs and branches, and found that ten or twelve of these glowing fungi produced enough light to be able to read by, providing you kept your light source fairly close to the page.
It was while I was attempting to read by the light of the fungi that I heard a curious sound that seemed to emanate from the forest behind our little hut. It was a fairly loud scrunching noise. It sounded to me, for some bizarre reason, like a matchbox being crushed in the hands of a very powerful man. Reluctantly I was forced to admit that, eccentric though the Rodriguans might be, it was unlikely that they crept about rain-drenched forests at three in the morning crushing matchboxes. Taking a torch, I eased my way out of our fragile hut and went to investigate. This was not quite so intrepid as it may appear, since there is nothing harmful in the animal line in Rodrigues, if you ignore the human animal. I made a careful search of the forest behind the hut, but could find nothing living that looked as though its normal cry resembled the crushing of a matchbox, and met nothing more ferocious than a large moth which seemed intent on trying to fly up the barrel of my torch. I went back to the hut and sat there, thinking. I wondered if we would catch any bats in the morning. Time was running short and I was debating with myself whether to move the nets nearer to the colony’s roosting site. As I was pondering this problem, I was startled by the rasping matchbox noise again, this time very much closer and from several different directions. John, who had woken up, sat up and stared at me.
‘What’s that?’ he enquired, sleepily.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea, but it’s been going on for about ten minutes. I had a look round and I couldn’t see anything.’
Just then, there was a positive battery of rasping noises, and the walls and the roof of the hut started to vibrate.
What the hell can it be?’ asked John.
I shone my torch at the banana-leaf roof and saw it was quivering and swaying, as though in an earthquake.
Before we could do anything intelligent, the whole roof gave way and a cascade of giant landsnails, each the size of a small apple, descended upon us. They were fat, glossy and wet, and they gleamed in the torchlight, frothing gently and leaving an interesting pattern of slime on our beds. It took us ten minutes to rid our shelter of these unwanted gastropods and to repair the roof. John curled up and went to sleep again, and I sat wondering if the bats, perhaps, had the same feeling about the Jak fruit as I had, and that this was why we had not met with success. An hour later, John woke up and claimed he was hungry.
‘I think I’ll have a sandwich or two,’ he said, ‘can you bung some over to me?’
I switched on the torch and shone it in the corner of the shelter that acted as our commissariat. To my dismay, I saw that all the giant landsnails we had so painstakingly evicted from our hut had silently and surreptitiously returned, and now formed a glittering, amber pile on our sandwiches, eating the bread with evident relish. They were aided and abetted by a half-grown, grey rat with glossy fur, white paws, and a forest of black whiskers. The snails were not alarmed by the torchlight and continued browsing happily on our supper, but the rat was of a more nervous disposition. As the torch beam hit him, he froze for an instant, only his whiskers quivering and his eyes rolling; then, with a piercing soprano scream, he turned round and rushed straight under the blanket into bed with me. He seemed convinced that this was a haven of safety, and I dislodged him with considerable difficulty by taking my bed to pieces. Having shooed him out of the hut and into the forest, I then retrieved the remainder of the sandwiches from the snails and while John was sorting out the less ragged and more edible ones, I banished the snails once more to the outer edges of the clearing. An hour or so later, John woke up again and claimed himself still hungry.
‘You can’t be still hungry,’ I said, ‘you only had some sandwiches an hour ago.’
‘I only had what the snails had left,’ said John, aggrievedly. ‘Didn’t we have some biscuits? Biscuits and a cup of tea. That would be nice.’
Sighing, I switched on the torch and, to my amazement, found the identical scene in our kitchen area. The snails had oozed their way back and were now feeding on the biscuits, as was my friend, the rat. Once again, as the torchlight hit him, the latter uttered his hysterical scream and dived into bed with me; this time, presumably so that I could give him even greater protection, he tried to climb up inside my shorts. I banished him with some firmness into the forest, hurled the snails after him, and removed the remainder of our food over to John’s side of the hut. I felt it was his turn to get on intimate terms with the rat. By this time, of course, we were so wide awake that we could not get to sleep, so sat and talked in a desultory fashion, waiting for it to get light. Just before dawn, we heard Ann stumbling through the forest towards us.
‘Caught anything?’ she asked when she arrived.
‘No,’ I said, ‘if you discount snails and a rat. But we might get something when it gets lighter.’
Gradually, the sky paled primrose yellow and the light strengthened as we left our snail-eaten hut and moved down to the trees nearer the nets.
‘I can’t understand why they don’t come,’ I said. ‘They must be able to smell that damned Jak fruit in Chicago!’
‘I know,’ said John, ‘what I think is...’
But what he thought was never vouchsafed to us, for he leant forward, peering intently.
‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing. ‘Surely it’s something in the net. Is it a bat?’
We all strained our eyes, staring into the clearing where the mist nets, fine as gossamer, vanished against the trees and shadows. ‘Yes,’ said Ann, excitedly, ‘I can see it. I’m sure it’s a bat.’