“Yessir,” said Elias cheerfully, and disappeared through the trees. For a few minutes I could hear the ring of his cutlass marking the trail, and then this grew fainter and eventually faded away. I lit a cigarette and surveyed my domain. Suddenly, from the very log on which I was sitting, a cicada lifted up its voice. I sat very still and scanned the bark carefully. These cicadas were the bane of my existence: they were everywhere in the forest, and they sang their loud vibrating songs both day and night, yet, try as I would, I had never yet succeeded in seeing one. Now, apparently, there was one zithering away within a foot of me, if I could spot him. I examined the trunk carefully, the green spongy moss, the minute clusters of crimson and yellow toadstools huddled in the cracks, the dead lianas still clutching their host’s body in a grip that had bitten into the bark. A trail of ants wended their way through this miniature scenery, and at the mouth of a small hole a black spider crouched immobile. But no sign of a cicada. Then, as I moved my head slightly, I caught a sudden gleam from the moss, as from glass. Looking closely I saw the insect: its body was about two inches long, and patterned in an intricate and beautiful filigree of silver and leaf-green, merging perfectly with the green moss and the grey bark of the trunk. Its great wings, which gleamed like glass when the sun caught them, were the things that had attracted my attention. Gently I brought my cupped hand down over it, and then suddenly I grabbed. The cicada, finding itself detected and captured, started to flutter its wings wildly, and they rustled like paper against my fingers. Then, in desperation, it uttered its prolonged shrill cry. I held it gently in my hand and examined it: the silver and green body was nut hard, and the eyes large and protuberant. The wings were like sheets of mica, and when held up to the light revealed a tracery of veins as complicated and beautiful as a cathedral window. Between its legs, set in a groove, was its long thin proboscis. With this fragile instrument it pierces the bark of the trees and gorges on the sap beneath. Having examined it I set it upright on the palm of my hand, where it sat for a minute, nervously vibrating its lovely wings before zooming off into the trees.
I was wondering if I could keep these insects alive in a netting cage on a diet of honey and water, and so get them back to England, when Elias returned. He had discovered the path, he said, and now knew where he was.
We rejoined the path and resumed our way towards the grass field. These grass fields are formed in certain areas of the forest where the soil is too shallow to support the probing roots of the huge trees. A low clinging growth covers this space, a growth that can exist with its wiry roots clinging to the few inches of soil covering the great carapace of rock that forms the foundation to the forest. So the tough grasses come into their own, spreading across the clearing; in the cracks in the rocks, where the rains have washed the soil into deeper pockets, tiny stunted trees get a foothold and flourish. But these small fields are ringed about by the tall forest: should the depth of soil increase the great trees scatter their seed and slowly usurp this territory from the grip of this lowly vegetation.
Presently the trees grew thinner, the light grew stronger, and we came to a thick tangle of low growth that bordered the clearing. We pushed our way through this flower-hung, thorny curtain, and found ourselves knee-deep in long grass, the clearing sloping away from us like a great meadow, golden-green in the sun, quiet and lonely, its borders fringed with the towering ramparts of the forest.
We lay down in the warm crisp grass and lit cigarettes. We lay there, basking in the sun, and gradually the sounds of the life in the clearing came floating to us: the ringing cries of the big pink winged locusts; a tree frog piping shrilly from the banks of the tiny trickle of water that curled through the grass; the soft and husky coo of a small dove, perched in the bushes above us. Then, from the far side of the clearing, a series of loud care-free cries rang out, echoing among the trees: “Carroo . . . carroo . . . coo . . . coo . . . coo. . . .”
Again and again, echoing loud across the shimmering grass. I trained my field-glasses on to the trees at the far side of the clearing and searched the branches carefully. Then I saw them, three large glittering green birds, with long heavy tails and curved crests. They took flight, straight as arrows, across the clearing, and landed in the trees the opposite side, and as they landed they shouted their challenging cry again. As they called, as though in an excess of high spirits, they leapt from branch to branch in great rabbit-like leaps, and raced along the branches like racehorses, as easily as though the branches had been roads. They were a flock of Giant Plantain-eaters, perhaps the most beautiful of the forest birds. I had often heard their wild cries in the forest, but this was my first sight of them. Their acrobatic powers amazed me, as they leapt and bounded, and ran amongst the branches, pausing now and then to pluck a fruit and swallow it, and then shout to the forest. As they flew from tree to tree in the sun, trailing their tails behind them like giant magpies, they shimmered green and gold, a breathtakingly beautiful colour.
“Elias, you see those birds?”
“Yessir.”
“I go give ten shillings for one of those alive.”
“Na true, sah?” “Na true. So you go try, eh?”
“Yessir . . . ten shillings . . . eh . . . aehh!” said Elias, as he lay back in the grass to enjoy the last puffs of his cigarette.
I sat back and watched the gorgeous shining birds leap and twist their way into the maze of trees, shouting joyfully to each other, and then silence descended on the grass field again.
Presently we set to work. The long nets with the small mesh were unpacked, and these we arranged in a half-circle, the lower edge buried in the soil. They were hung rather loosely, so that any animal running into them would become entangled in the folds. Then, from point to point of the nets, we cleared the undergrowth away in a strip some two feet wide, and, cutting grass, we laid this along the line, and covered it lightly with damp leaf-mould. Now we had a complete circle, half formed by the nets, the other half by this line of dry grass. Then we proceeded to drench the grass with kerosene and set light to it. The damp leaf-mould prevented the tinder-like grass from burning quickly, so it smouldered gently, letting a thin curtain of pungent smoke drift towards the nets. We waited expectantly, but nothing happened. Only a host of big locusts fled from the smoke, hopping and whirring agitatedly. We put out the fire, moved the nets to a fresh area, and repeated the performance with the same results. Our eyes smarted with the smoke, and we were scorched by the fire and the sun. Six times we moved the nets, laboriously laid the fires, and still caught nothing for our pains.
I was beginning to doubt Elias’s judgement of this grass field as a good place for beef, when on the seventh pitch we struck lucky. Scarcely had we set fire to the grass when I saw a portion of the net start to quiver and jerk. I rushed through the smoke and found a large grey animal with a long scaly tail struggling in the folds of the net. I caught him swiftly by the tail and swung him aloft: it was a Pouched Rat, as big as a kitten, his grey fur full of the large cockroach-like parasites that inhabit these beasts.
“Elias, I get ground beef,” I shouted. But he was too busy at another part of the net to heed me, so with some difficulty I succeeded in getting the rat into a thick canvas bag without getting myself bitten. I approached the other end of the net through the smoke, and found Elias darting about on all fours grunting and mumbling angrily:
“Ah, you blurry ting you . . . ah, you bad beef. . . ”
“What is it, Elias?”
“Na bush rat, sah,” he said excitedly, “’e de run too fast, and ’e de bite too much . . . careful, sah, ’e go chop you. . . ”