The second butterfly was a large and beautiful creature, but seen less often than the smaller white one. Its long, rather narrow wings were the most pure and vivid fire-red. Its flight was swift and erratic: suddenly in the gloom of the bushes this tantalizing flame would appear, arriving from nowhere, glimmering and glittering around, then, suddenly, like blowing out a candle, the flame was no longer there. Always the forest looked a little darker for its disappearance.
The most notable feature of the forest was the innumerable tiny streams, shallow and clear, that meandered their way in an intricate and complicated pattern across its floor. Glinting and coiling round the smooth brown boulders, sweeping in curves to form the snow-white sandbanks, busily hollowing out the earth from under the grasping tree roots, shimmering and chuckling, they went into the dark depths of the forest. They chattered and frothed importantly over diminutive waterfalls, and scooped out deep placid pools in the sandstone, where the blue and red fish, the pink crabs, and the small gaudy frogs lived. These streams, in the dry season, became the main roadways of the forest animals. Not only a roadway, but food and drink, for here congregated both the hunters and the hunted. The sandbanks would be covered with a filigree of footmarks: coral-like patterns of the bird prints, the Forest Robins, the chats, and the fat green pigeons, and occasionally the long precise toe-marks of the Pygmy Rails. On the soft earth banks you could see the great ploughed areas among the tree roots where the Red River Hogs had been rooting for tubers and giant snails, and in the soft mud you could see the long narrow slots of the boars and sows, and the tiny footprints of the piglets interlacing amongst them.
This was the forest as I was shown it by Elias and Andraia, and I found nothing frightening or dangerous about it. It was enchanting, and in the groves of towering trees with their canopy of fluttering leaves a deep silence enveloped everything, and a wonderful peacefulness prevailed.
The first day that Elias and Andraia came to take me into the forest was a memorable one, for during the time we were out I saw more animals than I ever saw again in such a short space of time . . . the gods of nature were indeed kind. My instructions to my guides were that they should lead me some five or six miles into the forest in a straight line from the village. We would then, I stated airily, walk round in a great circle with the village as the hub, so to speak. Several times during the day I regretted this plan bitterly, but I felt that my prestige was at stake on this, my first effort in the bush, and so I kept doggedly on and arrived back late that night a tattered and exhausted wreck.
We left early in the morning, and it was with relief that I heard the uproar of the camp fade away. Some twenty villagers had been engaged to build the animal house, and the noise and confusion that attended their efforts were indescribable.
We walked through the strip of farmland that surrounded the village, fields of cassava bushes and oil palms dotted with the great red earth fortresses of the Termites. I examined these massive craggy structures with interest, for I knew that in the base of each would be numerous holes in which dwelt an odd assortment of creatures besides the rightful owners of the nests. Some of them were ten feet high and twenty-five feet round the base, and the earth was baked hard as cement. Reluctantly I decided to leave investigation of these until some later date. They were near to camp and would provide some interesting trapping and digging within easy reach when the time came that I could not wander so far afield. We walked on, and presently the path crossed a small silent stream and the water was ice-cold to our feet as we waded across. We scrambled up the opposite bank, rustled and cracked our way through the low undergrowth, and burst into the forest, pausing a moment for our eyes to accustom themselves to the dimness.
We had covered about three miles, the floor of the forest was very level and easy going, when Elias, who was in front, froze in his tracks and held up his hand. We waited tensely, listening, and then Elias crept to my side and whispered:
“Na monkey, sah, ’e dere for dat big stick.”
I peered up into the head foliage of “dat big stick” towering two hundred feet above us, but I could neither see nor hear a thing.
“What kind of monkey?” I asked, straining my eyes desperately.
“Na black one, sah, ’e get white mark for his face. . . ” Putty-nose Guenon, I thought bitterly, and try as I would I could see nothing.
“Masa see ’um?”
“Not a thing.”
“Masa, we go for dis side. Masa go see. . . ” We moved off towards the place Elias indicated, drifting as silently as possible through the undergrowth. I remembered suddenly that I had my field- glasses with me, and cursing myself for a fool, I unslung them and trained them on the tree-tops. I gazed up at the shimmering ocean of leaves without success, feeling unreasonably irritated that both my hunters could obviously see and hear the monkeys, while I, even with my field-glasses, could not see a living thing. Then, suddenly, out of a mass of leaves along a great black branch, trouped a delightful procession. The first monkey was an old male, his tail crooked over his back, peering from side to side as he walked out along the branch. He was coal black, with the tips of the fur on his back tinged with green, so that he had a speckled appearance. His chest was white, and on his little black face the area on and around his nose was white also, a large heart-shaped patch as glistening white as a snowball. The hair on his head was long, and stood up straight, so that he looked not unlike a golliwog stalking disdainfully through the branches. Close on his heels came his two wives, both smaller than he, and both very timid, for they had young. The first carried a minute replica of herself slung at her breast. He was as small as a newly born kitten, and he hung under his mother’s body, his long arms wrapped round her and his small hands clasping tight to the fur on her back. The other baby was older and walked cautiously behind his mother, peering fearfully down at the great drop below him, and uttering a plaintive cheeping cry. I was captivated by these babies, and as I watched them I made up my mind that I would get hold of some baby Putty-nose Guenon if I had to spend the rest of my life at it.
“Masa go shoot?” came a hoarse whisper from Elias, and lowering the glasses, I found him offering me the shotgun. For a moment I was angry that he should suggest firing at that charming family, with their golliwog heads and their white clowns’ noses. But I realized it would be impossible to explain my reasons to these men: in the Cameroon forest sentimental feelings are the luxury of the well-fed. In such a place meat is hard to come by and every ounce worth its weight in gold, therefore aesthetic feelings come a very poor second to a protein-hungry body.
“No, Elias, I no go shoot,” I said, and turned my glasses back to the tree-tops, but my little family had disappeared. “Elias?”
“Sah?”
“You tell men for village I go pay five shillings for one picken of that kind of monkey . . . you hear?”
“I hear, sah,” said Elias, brightening visibly.
We continued our erratic way between the tree trunks, and presently came to the banks of a small stream which gurgled its way pleasantly over its shallow bed. The banks were spongy and wet, covered with a thick growth of large-leafed plants, green and succulent. We were wading through this waist-high growth, following the course of the river, when Elias suddenly leapt in the air with a yelp, and shouted, “Shoot, Masa, shoot. . . ” There was a great commotion going on ahead of me, but I could see nothing to shoot at, except Andraia, who was hopping about in the undergrowth like a lanky grasshopper, uttering cries of “Eh . . . aehh!” Judging by the noise, some large animal was hidden in the greenery, but as it was thick enough to conceal anything from a leopard to a full-sized gorilla, I was not quite sure what to expect. Suddenly the animals broke cover, and I stood there gaping in amazement as a fully grown pair of Red River Hogs fled, zigzagging through the trees. They were the most vivid orange colour with long white tufts on their ears, and a flowing mane of white hair along their backs. They were quite the most startling and beautiful members of the pig family I had ever seen, arid I gazed after them open-mouthed. They disappeared with extraordinary rapidity into the forest. Elias and Andraia seemed to take rather a dim view of this example of my hunting powers.