“Andraia,” I yelled, “you make too much smoke . . . you go kill Elias and the beef together . . . put the fire out, make it small, you hear?”
“Yes, sah, I hear,” came faintly from the other end of the tree.
Once more I crawled into the smoke-filled interior.
“You all right, Elias?”
“I get um, sah, I get um,” screamed Elias delightedly, between coughs.
“Bring um,” I called, crawling frantically round on all fours in an endeavour to see through the smoke, “bring um quick . . .” It seemed hours before the horny soles of his feet appeared in the entrance, and he emerged choking and coughing and stark naked, the capture wrapped in his loin cloth. He grinned at me excitedly.
“I put um for my cloth, sah,” he said. “I fear sometime de picken go fall.”
“Dis beef run fast?” I inquired, carrying the mysterious heavy bundle out to a clear spot before unwrapping it.
“No, sah.”
“He bite?”
“No, sah.”
Fortified with this knowledge I placed the bundle on the ground and unwrapped it. There appeared before my eyes the most extraordinary beast. A first glance at the contents of the loin-cloth showed me what seemed to be a gigantic brown fir cone, with a smaller pink-grey coloured cone adhering to it. Then I realized that it was a female Pangolin, or Scaly Anteater, rolled tight into a ball, with her tiny pale youngster clinging to her back.
“Catar beef, sah,” said Elias proudly.
“Na fine beef dis,” I said.
With difficulty I removed the baby from its mother’s back to have a look at it. It was, unlike its mother, quite fearless, and sat on the palm of my hand peering at me myopically out of its small rheumy eyes, exactly like two dull and protuberant boot buttons. It was about ten inches long from the tip of its long snout to the tip of its scaly tail, and its back, head, legs and tail were covered with tiny, overlapping, leaf-shaped scales which, as it was so young, were this pale pinkish-grey and still soft. His tummy, chin, insides of his legs, and his sorrowful face were covered with whitish, rather coarse fur, and the underside of his tail was quite bare. His face was long, and his wet and sticky nose he kept trying to push between my fingers. The fat little hind paws were neatly clawed, but the front feet possessed one great curved claw, bordered on each side by a smaller claw. With these front claws the baby clung to my hand with incredible strength, and tried to coil his tail round my wrist for extra safety, but this part of his anatomy had not yet got the strength of the adult, so that every time he coiled it round, it slipped off. His mother was the same to look at, except that her scales were hard and chestnut brown in colour, and the edges were worn and broken, not finished off neatly in three little spikes as the baby’s were. As far as I could judge, for she resisted unrolling with a becoming modesty, she must have measured about three feet in length. Curled up she was the size of a football.
The hunters, of course, were wildly enthusiastic over this capture: but I was remembering all that I had read about pangolins, and was inclined to take a gloomy view. Pangolins are anteaters: they possess no teeth, but a very long, snake-like tongue and a copious supply of very sticky saliva. With their great front claws they rip open the ants’ nests, and then their long tongues flick in and out, and on each return journey there is a layer of ants adhering to it. As is the case with all animals that have such a restricted diet, they do not take kindly to a substitute food in captivity, and have so earned the reputation of being extremely difficult to keep alive. However, they were my first pangolins, and I was determined that I would not give in without a struggle. I replaced the baby on its mother’s back, and he clung on with his great front claws stuck in a crack between two scales, and the tip of his tail hooked into another. Then, having anchored himself; he put his long nose between his front paws and went to sleep. We placed them both in a canvas bag and then continued on our way.
An hour’s walk brought us to the cave that Elias had been so anxious to get me to: a steep hillside covered with enormous rocks tumbled about its lower slopes, some of them half buried in the earth, and some almost hidden under a dense growth of ferns, begonias, and thick moss. Under one of these rocks was an opening some three feet long and eighteen inches high. Elias pointed at it proudly.
“Na hole, sah,” he explained.
“Is this the cave?” I inquired, inspecting the tiny opening suspiciously.
“Yes, sah. ’E get small door, but ’e get plenty room for inside. . . . Masa go look with flashlight?” “All right,” I said resignedly.
They cleared away the undergrowth from the mouth of the cave, and then, lying on my stomach, I insinuated my head and shoulders into the opening. Sure enough, the interior of the cave was the size of a small room, and at the far end the floor seemed to slope steeply down into the depths of the hillside. The air smelt fresh and cold. The floor of the cave was of solid rock, sprinkled with pure white sand. I wriggled out again.
“Someone,” I said firmly, “will have to go inside and hold the torch, then we can follow.” I surveyed the hunters, none of whom showed any eagerness to volunteer for this duty. I picked out Daniel as being the smallest.
“You, Daniel, take the flashlight and go for inside. Andraia and I go follow. . . ”
Both Daniel and Andraia seemed reluctant.
“Masa,” whined Daniel, “sometime dere go be beef for inside. . . .”
“Well?”
“Sometime ’e go catch me. . . ”
“You no be hunter?” I inquired, frowning severely. “If you be hunter how beef go catch you? You go catch beef, no be so?” “I de fear,” said Daniel simply.
“Elias,” I said, “go listen if you can hear beef for inside.” Each, in turn, pushed his woolly head into the hole, and each said that they could not hear anything.
“You see?” I said to Daniel. “Now you go for inside. No fear, we no go leave you. Andraia and I go follow you one time.”
With the air of a martyr approaching the stake, Daniel lowered himself to the ground and crawled into the hole.
“Now, Andraia, in you go. . . .”
Andraia’s six and half feet took some time to get inside, and we could hear him abusing Daniel roundly, first for sitting right in the entrance (or, from Daniel’s point of view, the exit), and secondly for shining the torch in his eyes. Eventually he disappeared from view, and I prepared to follow him. Just as my head and shoulders were inside a series of loud shrieks burst forth from the cave, I was hit sharply on the head with the handle of the butterfly net, and the torch was flashed in my eyes so that I could not see what was happening.
“Masa, Masa,” yelled Daniel, hitting me again with the butterfly net, “na big boa . . . na big snake. .
. . Go back, sah, go back. . . ”
“Shut up,” I roared, “and stop hitting me with that bloody net.”
Daniel subsided into a trembling heap, and I crawled in and crouched beside him, taking charge of the torch. I flashed it around and located Andraia’s lanky body sitting next to me.
“Andraia, which side dis boa?”
“I no see um, sah,” he answered. “Daniel ’e say ’e see um for dere . . ” and he gestured with a long arm into the deep passage in front of us.
“You see um?” I asked Daniel, whose teeth were chattering.
“Yessah, I see um for true, sah, ’e dere dere for inside. ’E get mark mark for his skin, sah. . .”
“All right. Be quiet and listen.”