During our search for snakes, we, of course, still pursued the Gunther’s geckos for we wanted some more young females, as well as the Bojeri and Telfair’s skinks. Zozo, flushed with enthusiasm at his prowess as a snake hunter, got so daring that he actually caught several of the agile, glittering Bojeri skinks and then confessed to me, having glanced round to make sure that he was not overheard, that before this expedition, he had actually been afraid of lizards. We searched on until the sun grew too hot for comfort, and then made our way back to camp. We were well satisfied, for we had eight Bojeri skinks, six young Telfair’s skinks and three half-grown Gunther’s geckos, as well as the snake. Later in the afternoon, when a little of the heat had gone out of the sun, we made another sortie through the Latania belt, but with no success. That night, we once again had a cacophonous company of the Shearwaters and slept fitfully.
Next morning, we decided to leave extra early, to make our way to one of the highest points of the island and then work downwards towards the sea. Climbing upwards, even that early in the morning, was an exhausting process and by the time we reached the highest vantage point, we were bathed in sweat.
Here one saw how eroded the island was, with the cliffsides of tuff falling sheer as a ski-slope down to the sea, grooved and veined into channels by the rain. Here and there lay boulders that had been unearthed from the tuff and tumbled into gullies in toppling piles, awaiting the next deluge to take them farther down towards their final resting place in the sea. At the summit the great sheets of tuff were hard enough, but we had had a little rain in the night and in places it had dissolved into something like the consistency of a slab of chocolate in a schoolboy’s pocket, sticky, slippery and full of foreign bodies. On these slopes, you had to move with extreme care for if you lost your footing, you would roll unhindered three or four hundred feet, until you crashed into the palm belt, or else, if you fell in a gully, nothing would impede your descent until you hit the sea some seven hundred feet below.
Gazing down at these steep slopes of tuff gouged into massive wrinkles by the rain, with what palms there were leaning over precariously in their efforts to retain their grip, and below, a carpet of tuff silt lying on the bottom of the sea, you realised forcibly that here was a unique, miniature world that had, by a miracle of evolution, come into being and was now being allowed to bleed to death. The twisted sheets and shelves of tuff were being drained away, while over them sprawled the trailing, inadequate tourniquets of the convolvulus plants, with their purple funeral flowers. While everyone argued over what to do about the rabbits, and got no forrader, this unique speck of land was diminishing day by day. It seemed to sum up in miniature what we were doing to the whole planet, with millions of species being bled to death for want of a little, so little, medicare.
For an hour or so, we made our way slowly seawards, zig-zagging down the steep sides, investigating the little copses of Latanias that huddled grimly wherever they could get a roothold. Even at this height, I found that these miniature woodlands of palms contained a myriad of creatures. There were cockroaches and crickets; beetles, flies, a strange larva wearing a case that looked like an ice-cream cone; stick insects, spiders; and on every exposed area a billion tiny mites, scarlet as huntsmen, rushing, apparently aimlessly, about the tuff. In holes under the dead Latania leaves curious purple-coloured land crabs with pale, cream-coloured claws which they waved to and fro, looking like bank clerks who had spent their lives endlessly counting other people’s money and now could not stop the reflex action of their hands. All around the Latanias lived the Telfair’s skinks, and you only had to sit down for a minute for them to come clustering round you with the curiosity of children, trying to eat your shoe laces or your
trouser bottoms, and devouring everything else that you threw down, from orange peel to paper. Here, in the grassy areas around the Latanias, lived the Bojeri, moving like quicksilver in the sun on their perpetual hunt for food, and on the Latanias themselves lived Vinson’s geckos, green as grass, with blue and scarlet heads.
I paused in the shade of a moderate-sized Latania to have an orange, and was treated to a very curious sight, which showed me how many Vinson’s geckos a palm could support, and also what a predatory nature the Telfair’s skink possessed.
I was sitting there, joyfully sucking my orange, when I heard a pattering noise on the leaves above me. I thought we were having a shower of rain, and it was raindrops I could hear on the stiff, cardboard-like fronds. The pattering went on, however, and I suddenly realised that I could not see any rain, nor could I feel any. Curious, I looked up at the fronds above me. Each great, green hand was made transparent by the sun and so I could see, scuttling and jumping, a shadow play of Vinson’s geckos. Sometimes, one would stop for a moment and peer round the edge of the frond, before rushing farther up the palm. There were easily forty of them, from fully adult specimens to fragile babies about an inch long. They leapt from frond to frond with the agility of frogs; they were all moving upwards and it was obvious that something was causing them to panic. It was an extremely pretty sight to see their little bodies in black silhouette, running and jumping across the screen of green leaves.
I peered into the depths of the Latania to see what was alarming this host of jewel-like geckos, hoping it might be a snake. There, making his way laboriously but methodically up the stem, was a large Telfair’s skink. Every now and then, he would pause in his climb and glance up, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth. Up above, the panic-stricken geckos leapt and scuttled and peered round the fronds, their shiny black eyes looking round and horror-stricken in their little coloured faces. The Telfair’s slow, ponderous approach had something rather prehistoric about it. After watching for a bit I decided that he had terrified the fairy-like Vinson’s quite enough, so I caught him and transported him some fifty feet away from the Latania. When I came back to finish my orange, all the geckos had settled down to bask in the sun and resume their small lives.
Half an hour later, a triumphant shout from Wahab informed us that we had captured our fourth snake. Again, it was a juvenile, but somewhat bigger than Zozo’s. We made our way back to camp, well satisfied, and even the tintinnabulation of the Shearwaters that night could not damp our enthusiasm.
Next morning, we had only time for one more search, since the helicopter was due to arrive at noon. We went off into the palm grove but met with no success, and so returned to the gruelling task of humping all our equipment down the valley and on to the heat-shimmered helipad. We left the tent up for shade and kept three jerry cans of water intact, using the others to give ourselves a much-needed bath.