We loaded our stuff into the helicopter, which had to make two trips because of the weight of the water, and took off. We swept low over the goalposts and the crowd of children, assembled to watch us, scattered and ran, laughing and screaming. Then
we roared up over the shaggy-headed palms and zoomed out over the emerald waters of the lagoon, over the foam flower bed of the reef, and then across the deep blue waters towards Round Island, that crouched, like a desiccated green and brown tortoise, on the horizon, fourteen miles away.
On the maps of Round Island, there are two areas in the south, marked ‘Big Helipad’ and ‘Small Helipad’. With these grandiose titles, you might imagine a smooth area of tarmac, wind socks, perhaps, and even a Customs and Immigration shed and a Tourist Bureau. Fortunately no such amenities exist. The helipads are simply two flattened areas, one larger than the other, which are, indeed, the only flattened areas of any size on the island. Here, the wind and the rain had beaten, broken and smoothed the tuff into patches which, if not exactly smooth as a ballroom, were a reasonably level sort of moonscape. We landed on the smaller one, the whirling of our propellers sending the White- and Red-tailed tropic birds and the dark, rather sinister, Trinidad petrels, whirling and calling around us. The petrels had the most peculiar and ethereal cry, that started off with a series of croaks and ended with a bubbling song of great beauty and wildness, not the sort of noise you would expect from a drab seabird. In contrast, the fairy-like beauty of the tropic birds did not lead you to expect a noise like somebody having difficulty in getting a champagne cork out of a bottle.
Struggling and sweating, we manhandled our tent and supplies across the helipad and down the valley that ran alongside it, while the tropic birds dive-bombed us like white icicles, creaking their strange cries, and the petrels, effortlessly gliding two feet above the ground, accompanied us like highly polished sheep dogs guarding a flock of unruly and irresponsible sheep.
The camp site we chose was on the banks of the eroded, wind- and water-sculptured gully which ran, like a miniature Grand Canyon, towards the sea. Here, the tuff lay in great, grey sheets and between these, there were areas where it had been scratched and powdered into a form of soil by a combination of rabbits and seabirds. Over this grew a green layer of small, fleshy-stemmed plants which, at first glance, looked not unlike watercress. Fortunately it was not eaten by the rabbits, so it formed a protective covering for those precious areas of soil. The patches looked like a series of incongruous green meadows with a scattering of palms in the harsh, eroded landscape. They seemed innocent enough and devoid of life, except for insects and a few prowling skinks, but as soon as darkness fell, the whole picture changed.
It took us until dark to get the camp set up and functioning properly. As the green twilight faded and the sky turned velvety black, awash with stars, as if at a given signal there arose the most extraordinary noise from the bowels of the earth. It started softly, almost tunefully, a sound like a distant pack of wolves, howling mournfully across some remote, snowbound landscape. Then, as more and more voices joined the chorus, it became a gigantic, mad mass being celebrated underground in some Bedlamite cathedral. You could hear the lunatic cries of the priests and the wild responses from the congregation. This lasted for about half an hour, the sounds rising and falling, the ground throbbing with the noise, and then, as suddenly as if the earth had burst open and released all the damned souls from some Gustave Doré subterranean hell, out of the holes concealed by the green meadows, mewing and honking and moaning, the baby Shearwaters burst forth.
They appeared in hundreds, as if newly arisen from the grave, and squatted and fluttered around our camp, providing such a cacophony of sound that we could hardly hear each other speak. Not content with this, the babies, being of limited intelligence, decided that our tent was a sort of superior nest burrow, designed for their special benefit. Squaking and moaning, they fought their way in through the openings and flapped over and under our camp beds, defecating with great freedom, and if handled without tact, regurgitating a fishy, smelly oil all over us.
‘Really, this is too much,’ I said, as I evicted the twentieth baby from my bed, ‘I know I am supposed to be an animal lover, but there are limits.’
We can lace up the ends of the tent, Gerry,’ said Wahab, ‘but it will be very hot.’
Well, I think I’d rather suffocate than share my bed with this avian cohort. Already my bed looks as though it were one of the more productive guano islands of Peru,’ I said bitterly, rescuing a baby Shearwater which had just fallen into my soup.
So we laced up the ends of the tent. Beyond sending the temperature up into the hundreds, this had little effect, for the babies, undaunted, started burrowing under the sides of the tent. Every time they successfully did this, we had to unlace the ends to throw them out. In the end, we had to lay our jerry cans of water along the edges of the tent to repel the determined invaders. Defeated at last, the babies sat outside the tent and gave us the benefit of their singing throughout the night.
‘Waaah, waaah, wooo,’ one crowd would shout, and the others would reply, Waaah, waaah, wooee,’ while a rival group sang ‘Ooo, ooh, ooh, OOOHH, ooh,’ and were backed up by a chorus Waah, waah, waah, ooeeee, waah, waah.’
This lasted until dawn. The only thing to break the monotony was when the parent birds flew in with food, and the strange cries of the babies were interspersed with peculiar and not very attractive sounds like a bath, full of liquid manure, running out. This was the parent birds regurgitating semi-digested fish. The tent began to smell like the interior of a whaling ship after a rich haul.
Towards dawn, when, through sheer exhaustion, we were falling into a fitful sleep in spite of the noise, the babies discovered a new virtue of the tent. Its sides were designed with beautifully arranged canvas slopes. The baby birds took it in turn to fly up on to the ridge of the tent and then to slide down the side, their claws making a noise like ripping calico on the canvas, while their brethren sat in a circle round about and made admiring cries, such as ‘Caaw, cooRR, COORR,’ and ‘Oooh, Coorr, Coorr.’ On mature reflection, I decided that this was the most uncomfortable night I had ever spent in my life.
The following morning, just before dawn, we awoke from our inadequate doze and staggered out from the tent, tripping and
stumbling to have a wash through the hordes of Shearwaters which still sat, honking, outside their burrows. The sky was pink, orange and green, with a handful of dark clouds scattered carelessly along the horizon. The sea was calm, a deep, cobalt blue. Over my head, the palms rustled their leaves with a sound like spectral rain, their fronds stamped black against the sky. Resting among them in an abandoned position on her back, was a fragile sickle moon, white as a tropic bird. The sky was freckled with the shapes of Shearwaters, flying and calling in a dawn chorus, and everywhere the dusky babies shuffled through the tobacco plants and scuttled into their holes.
Having had breakfast, we set off to the palm belt and here, we instructed Zozo in the art of snake catching. He asked, with a fine insouciance, whether he was actually to catch the snakes or just to find them. We said it would be fine if he just found them. So, pushing his solar topee on to the back of his head, and settling his sunglasses more firmly on his Pekinese nose, he set off. Within half an hour, to our astonishment, he called out that he had found a snake. We bore down on the Latania by which he was standing. Secretly, I felt sure that what he had discovered would be the tail of a Telfair’s skink, but there, in the leaves, lying placidly, without fear, was a semi-grown boa. It had a fine, slender head and its colouring — in contrast to the greenish shade of the adult and the vivid, fox-red and yellow of the baby — was dark olive with a lacy network of dull yellow patches on its neck, parts of its back and the base of its tail. We congratulated Zozo on his brilliance until his grin of delight almost encircled his head; and so we continued on our way, exhilarated that we had met with such success so swiftly.