'Dey done come,' he whispered, his face wreathed in smiles.
I followed the pointing of his finger, and for a moment I could see nothing but a confused net of branches. Then something moved, and I saw the animal that we had been awaiting.
It came drifting through the tangled branches with all the gentle, airy grace of a piece of thistledown. When it got nearer, I discovered that it looked exactly like my idea of a leprechaun: it was clad in a little fur coat of greenish-grey, and it had a long, slender, furry tail. Its hands, which were pink, were large for its size, and its fingers tremendously long and attenuated. Its ears were large and the skin so fine that it was semi-transparent; these ears seemed to have a life of their own, for they twisted and turned independently, sometimes crumpling and folding flat to the head as if they were a fan, at others standing up pricked and straight like anaemic arum lilies. The face of the little creature was dominated by a pair of tremendous dark eyes, eyes that would have put any self-respecting owl to shame. Moreover, the creature could twist its head round and look over its back in much the same way that an owl does. It ran to the tip of a slender branch that scarcely dipped beneath its weight, and there it sat, clutching the bark with its long, slender fingers, peering about with its great eyes and chirruping dimly to itself. It was, I knew, a galago, but it looked much more like something out of a fairy tale.
It sat on the branch, twittering vaguely to itself, for about a minute; then an astonishing thing happened. Quite suddenly the trees were full of galagos, galagos of every age and size, ranging from those little bigger than a walnut to adults that could have fitted themselves quite comfortably into an ordinary drinking-glass. They jumped from branch to branch, grasping the leaves and twigs with their large, thin hands, twittering softly to each other and gazing round them with the wide-eyed innocence of a troupe of cherubim. The baby ones, who seemed to be composed almost entirely of eyes, kept fairly close to their parents; occasionally they would sit up on their hind legs and hold up their tiny pink hands, fingers spread wide, as though in horror at the depravity they were seeing in the world of leaves around them.
One of these babies discovered, while I watched, that he was sitting on the same branch as a large and succulent locust. It was evening time, and the insect was drowsy and slow to realize its danger. Before it could do anything, the baby galago had flitted down the branch and grabbed it firmly round the middle. The locust woke up abruptly and decided that something must be done. It was a large insect, and was, in fact, almost as big as the baby galago; also it possessed a pair of long and muscular hind legs, and it started to kick out vigorously with them. It was a fascinating fight to watch: the galago clasped the locust desperately in his long fingers, and tried to bite it. Each time he tried to bite, the locust would give a terrific kick with its hind legs and knock its adversary off balance, so he would fall off the branch and hang underneath, suspended by his feet. When this had happened several times, I decided that the galago must have adhesive soles. And even when hanging upside down and being kicked in the stomach by a large locust, he maintained his expression of wide-eyed innocence.
The end of the fight was unexpected: when they were hanging upside down, the locust gave an extra hefty kick, and the galago's feet lost their grip, so that they fell through the leaves clasped together. As they tumbled earthwards, the galago loosened one hand from his grip round the locust's waist and grabbed a passing branch with the effortless ease of a trained acrobat. He hauled himself on to the branch and bit the locust's head off before the insect could recover sufficiently to continue the fight. Holding the decapitated but still kicking body in one hand, the galago stuffed the insect's head into his mouth and chewed it with evident enjoyment. Then he sat, clasping the twitching body in one hand and contemplated it with his head on one side, giving vent to shrill and excited screams of delight. When the corpse had ceased to move and the big hind legs had stiffened in death, the galago tore them off, one by one, and ate them. He looked ridiculously like a diminutive elderly gourmet, clasping in one hand the drumstick of some gigantic chicken. Soon the valley was filled with shadow and it became difficult to see the galagos among the leaves, though we could hear their soft chattering. We rose from our cramped positions and made our way back up the hillside. At the top the Fon paused and gazed down at the woods below, smiling delightedly.
'Dat beef!' he chuckled, 'I like um too much. All time 'e make funny for me, an' I go laugh.'
'Na fine beef,' I said. 'How you call um?'
'For Bafut,' said the Fon, 'we call um Shilling.'
'You think sometimes my hunter men fit catch some?'
'To-morrow you go have some,' promised the Fon, but he would not tell me how they were to be captured, nor who was to do the capturing. We reached Bafut in the dusk, and when the Fon was respectably clothed once more he came and had a drink. As I said good night to him, I reminded him of his promise to get me some of the galagos.
'Yes, my friend, I no go forget,' he said. 'I go get you some Shilling.'
Four days passed, and I began to think that either the Fon had forgotten, or else the creatures were proving more difficult to capture than he had imagined. Then, on the fifth morning, my tea was brought in, and reposing on the tray was a small, highly-coloured raffia basket. I pulled off the lid and looked sleepily inside, and four pairs of enormous, liquid, innocent eyes peered up at me with expressions of gentle inquiry. It was a basketful of Shillings from the Fon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Que-Fong-Goo
The grassland country was populated by a rich variety of reptile life, and most of it seemed easily caught. In the lowland forests you very rarely saw a snake of any description, even if you searched for them. There were snakes there, of course, but I think that they were more widely dispersed, and probably most of the species were tree-dwellers, which made them much more difficult to see and to capture. In the mountains, however, the grass was alive with small rodents and frogs, and the patches of mountain forest rilled with birds, so it was a paradise for snakes. There were great black spitting cobras, green mambas, slim tree-snakes with enormous, innocent-looking eyes, the multi-coloured Gaboon viper, with a forked rhino-like horn on its nose, and a host of others. As well as snakes, there were plenty of frogs and toads; the frogs ranged in size from the Hairy Frog down to tiny tree-frogs the size of an acorn, some spotted and streaked with such a dazzling array of colours that they looked more like delicious sweets than amphibians. The toads, on the whole, were fairly drab, but they made up for this by being decorated with strange clusters of warts and protuberances on their bodies, and an astonishing variety of colouring in their eyes.