The Animal Kingdom
VOLUME 160
NUMBER 2
AUGUST 1937
BY IVAN SANDERSON
I
THE animals that crowd their little faces into these pages lived, or are still living, in the deep virgin forests of West Africa, around a place called Mamfe, some 250 miles north-northeast of Calabar at the extreme southeast corner of the Protectorate of Nigeria.
Running north from Calabar is a river known as the Cross River — a logical name for a river that one has to cross continually because of sand bars. This river suddenly turns right, out
of Nigeria, into the adjacent country mandated to Great Britain. All the country to the west or left of this river is intersected by roads and railways; to the east is untouched, unspoiled Africa, as it was before Europeans began crawling about it.
It was into such country that I went with two colleagues, George Russell and Philip Seaton, and a varying complement of Africans collected en route as necessity dictated — but perhaps before I go further I had better explain why I went to Mamfe at all.
Ever since I was a child, and had a nurse who showed me animals, chased butterflies in the sunlight with me, and taught me to blare out the names of strange animals from a book full of pictures of palm trees, I had wanted to go and look for animals in a land where there was sunshine. Then one day I found myself in the position of being able to choose between staying a year at school before going to a university, to learn more about my beloved animals, or doing something else. I chose the something else, and bolted from Europe like a shot rabbit at the tender, impressionable, and exciting age of seventeen, my boxes filed with traps, butterfly nets, skinning implements, and all the other recognized stock-in-trade of the collector.
Copyright 1937, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.
Then came the first shock to my youthful enthusiasm. I worked by night and by day setting traps, stalking animals, skinning animals, stuffing animals; and when all the animals so painstakingly accumulated had been looked at in the cold light of a museum, what did my work amount to? Just nothing more than a repetition of some of the looser moments of that great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace! There was obviously something wrong.
Slowly it dawned on me. Scientific methods of collecting animals were out of date.
The truth seemed to be this. Nobody knew anything about the how and why of animals’ behavior other than studying those few kept in institutions. Only the bold differences that can be observed through a comparison of dried and pickled remains in museums seemed to have been recorded. I decided that I would study animals by laboratory methods but in their natural surroundings and in the jungle — if somebody might be persuaded that my idea was practical, necessary, and comparatively inexpensive.
The start of organizing an expedition is somewhat bewildering. I soon saw that business methods would have to be employed if my ideal was to be realized — a real portable research station to be taken into the heart of the African jungle. The question of capital had to be tackled first.
By chance a circular fell into my hands stating that a certain famous scientist required internal organs of some particular animals. Funnily enough, these animals were only to be found in the one place that I had had in the back of my mind as a promising spot for operations.
Then, again by chance, I heard of another man who wanted definite evidence of a whale in the rivers of the same country. From him I went to the leading scientists at Cambridge — and found that they required the exotic Giant Water Shrew from the same place, and also a general collection of the animals inhabiting the country. The British Museum also wanted specimens of the queer, tick-like Podogona. All these people, moreover, offered to assist me in getting backing from scientific societies.
My major problems of what to collect and where to get the necessary money solved, the next question arose — whom to take with me? For the tropics and hard work I believe one must weed out all the athletes, sportsmen, and anybody who is large, beefy, or ‘tough.’ From the remaining ‘worms’ you should choose someone who is at least at home in and used to smoky bars, airless cabarets, and crowded tube trains — and hope that he will not carry with him any illness which will flower in the tropics.
My friend George Russell fulfilled all the conditions, and, strangely enough, on the quiet happened to be a better athlete than many of the beefy gentlemen — and a better sportsman I could not have selected.
When George got persistent low fever and was told he was dying of consumption I rushed him down to the coast, meanwhile wiring frantically for someone to take his place. George, having found that his lungs were as sound as any man’s, waited at the coast for this substitute and brought him up to me. Philip Seaton, whom we named the Duke for abstruse reasons of our own, was an ideal person for an expedition. He was slightly ‘beefy’ at first, but after one or two spates of fever he got thin like us, and was positively bouncing by the end of the trip.
II
From our little house at Mamfe the view was conventional enough, provided one looked west, southwest, or south: fields of grass, a little stream, a tennis court, some small sheds with corrugated-iron roofs, and a secondclass metal road winding between them all. Even the trees seemed familiar. A horse grazed quietly, it drizzled from a gray sky, and a white man wearing gray flannel trousers and smoking a pipe passed along the road on a bicycle.
All of a sudden incongruity in the form of a dazzlingly white bird, with awkward black legs and a long beak, fell rather than flew into sight and attempted to land on the horse. Needless to say, it missed its objective, as egrets always do. Hurtling against a fence, it closed its wings before finding its feet and remained wobbling drunkenly back and forth, giving vent to shrill cries and staring wildly about, as if this were not its own fault.
These birds are vermin, — or rather, Africa is verminous with them, — for nothing so beautiful or artistically satisfying as an egret could ever really be classed with rats and the body louse. Previously they were much sought after for their plumes, which stick out from under the wings like a tiny snow cloud. Now that better and cheaper plumes can be made out of cellophane, this lovely bird is spared to play the part of the London pigeon around the houses of West African settlements.
On this particular morning, when the whole world as viewed from the Mamfe rest house seemed gray and dark green, the egrets stood out like lights in their dazzling whiteness. On one side of the house a long string was stretched between two poles. Along this at intervals little butter-muslin bags were tied, containing the skulls of animals that had been skinned. The skull is almost the most precious part of an animal from a zoölogist’s point of view, and receives special attention. It is cleaned of as much flesh as possible, soaked in running water, rolled in sawdust, and finally hung out to dry in a little bag to which a label is attached. The bag is to prevent the loss of teeth that may become loosened through drying or decomposition of the flesh.
The flies, however, soon found out what was in the little bags and proceeded to lay their eggs in them. The egrets found the flies, and the string became a sort of second Chambre des Députés. The Diehards flapped their wings and wobbled precariously, the Front Populaire buzzed incessantly, multiplying among the offal almost while one watched. Egrets are presumably waders, if judged by their legs and feet, which are long and slender. The process of chasing fly grubs suspended about three inches below a swaying string becomes for them, therefore, about as great a problem as eating an apple tied below a rope would be to a rather inexpert tightrope walker. Each bird fell off once every few minutes; sometimes all would topple over together in a cloud of flies.
The string of little bags was removed at sundown and taken indoors as a precaution against the undue attentions of the many nocturnal marauders. One egret, a rather weedy-looking bird, discovered where they went to, a small shed at the back of the house. Unhappily, he got wedged between the wall and the eaves of the roof in trying to gain an entrance, though how he got so far I could never make out. Here he remained, squawking like a child, while we searched for the focus of the commotion. I found him not particularly frightened but obviously rather angry, like Walt Disney’s duck, his eyes filled with that expression of surprised wonderment that an egret always assumes when committing its daily folly or error in judgment. As I grappled with his feathery posterior in an endeavor to squeeze it through the eaves, he gave a hiccough, opened his beak, and let fall three balls of fly maggots each as large as an apple. The egret looked more surprised than ever and slipped through the eaves without further difficulty.
The egrets of Mamfe had enemies, one of whom met his end suddenly on this particular gloomy day. The seedylooking egret, after his miscalculation at the back of the house, had assumed an impertinent attitude toward his kith and kin. Scorning the swaying skull string, he took to intruding upon our privacy at the skinning tables and had to be constantly ordered off the field for roughhousing with the skinners. On this occasion he was shooed off the verandah at the moment when his brethren were beating a hasty retreat to the safety of the bushes behind the kitchen.
Swaying and chattering with anger, he stood amongst the stuffed animals pinned on boards that had been carried out to dry in the sun, which had just made its first appearance in several weeks. So taken up was he with his indignation that he failed to notice the hurried departure of the other birds or the silent cruciform shadow that glided mysteriously over the hard-beaten earth around him. Gong-Gong, the youngest member of the staff, who was posted at the corner of the verandah throughout the day to watch for the hawks and kites which swooped out of the sky to snatch up our stuffed rats, thinking them to be alive, gave the warning.
The hawk, a particularly big one, which would probably be called an eagle in this country, was, however, after our little friend the egret. GongGong’s call to arms was the signal for a wild scramble for loaded shotguns, always kept to hand. We dashed for the open only to see the shadow of the marauder flash across the ground as the great bird nose-dived for his prey. The little egret, suddenly realizing his peril, struggled to gain the air.
With a deafening report two barrels gave tongue at the very instant the hawk was stalling to bring his talons into position for the death grip. With a burst of feathers, the interloper swerved, somersaulted, and crashed with wings outspread. The excited staff dashed eagerly in to the kill, but the fierce bird was by no means done for. Hissing, yellow eyes blazing, he hurled himself at the men’s legs. He was quickly dispatched with a shot from an automatic.
In the excitement of victory the egret was forgotten. He had escaped and apparently benefited from his experience, for he never returned again, though we saw him later on the sandbanks in the river with his drooping left wing and incredulous expression.
III
‘Master, man bring beef.’
There was always excitement at that announcement, which was made to me at all times of the day and night as I sat before the catalogues measuring rats’ feet and frogs’ tummies, pickling lice and worms, and doing the other multitudinous odd jobs that a scientific collecting trip entails.
A grinning black face appeared above the verandah level with my feet.
‘Well, what is it?’ I inquired.
‘Beef,’ replied the face. ‘Master go take ’em two shilling,’ and he fumbled in his cloth.
With a scream he withdrew his hand and started sucking his finger, cursing loudly and roundly in By’angi. Willing helpers came forward, searched him, and produced two minute black clots of glossy fur each about two inches long. These were placed on the verandah, where they instantly rose on their hind legs like pugilists and, screaming in almost inaudibly high-pitched voices, proceeded to wrestle and box with each other. I say wrestle and box, but there certainly were n’t any rules.
Of all the mean, unpleasant, evilsmelling, vicious things that live, the West African shrew (Crocidura) is the most mean, unsavory, and irascible. These screeching little horrors were bought for a penny each, placed in a tiny cage, and supplied with a haunch of strong-smelling anteater meat. They fought and screamed for the rest of the day and most of the night. Next morning all the meat, larger than both of them put together, had vanished, and only one shrew remained alive. The other lay in a corner of the cage, eviscerated and with most of its head eaten by its companion.
These shrews will attack anything, man and large bush cats included. Their tiny jaws are armed with a phalanx of needle-sharp teeth, and their pungent smell protects them from predatory birds and mammals alike. They are classed as insectivores, but their diet is more omnivorous than that of man himself. I have seen them eat each other, insects, shellfish, corn, putrified flesh, and even a dead snake. They inhabit the long grass of forest clearings, where they are often caught, as in the case of these two, when natives are clearing the ground.
As the day wore on, our friend who had been bitten returned several times with more shrews, as well as a variety of other local vermin, until the whole house began to stink. This smell is unbelievable until it is encountered. In the British Museum I have merely touched a large bottle of alcohol in which some shrews had been sealed for over three years and had to wash my hands twice to prevent being sick. Nothing drowns the smell; it gets everywhere. Yet by a simple process the natives transmute it into the most delicious, delicate, and lasting scent I have ever encountered, smelling somewhere between sandalwood and tangerines. The shrews are stewed whole with certain leaves and palm oil to bind the brew. The oil rises to the surface and is skimmed off, carrying with it the wonderful aroma that is so unlike the beastly little animal.
IV
During our expedition we collected some 7000 odd animals comprising about 450 species. This is only an approximation, as several of the groups have not yet been completely identified and named. There proved to be 70 species of mammals; 64 different reptiles, including snakes; 46 different frogs, and about 250 different spiders, centipedes, parasitic worms, ticks, crabs, lobsters, shells, scorpions, and others. Only a handful of the whole lot are sufficiently well knowm to have popular names, and quite a number, being entirely new even to science, are only now receiving ‘Latin’ names. The result is that I have no choice but to label the creatures to whom I introduce you by their fabulous scientific names.
This may, however, serve a double purpose. First, it may answer a question that is constantly asked: why do scientists persist in allotting such stupendous titles to such obscure animals? Secondly, it may act as a kind of insurance for the mere facts that I have perforce to include in my tales.
Facts about lions and rhinoceroses are open to verification or speculation, as the case may be, whereas facts about a frog with hairs are open to neither, unless some peg is provided upon which that frog may be securely hung. The scientific name does this, as it gives a guide to the purely zoölogical and gruesomely intricate literature upon the subject.
The absolute necessity of giving animals their true and complete names is evident when the wild life of the world and not merely of these insignificant little islands is being dealt with. There are over six thousand different beetles in the British Isles alone; when investigating a place like the Cameroons, the infinite varieties are legion. In England we have but four frogs; in Mamfe there are at least fifty different kinds. Try to think of fifty different names for frogs without becoming idiotic or grammatically absurd!
To turn to Rana occipitalis, this frog’s name means literally ‘the back-of-theheady one who makes noises.’ The word rana was used by the Romans for ‘frog,’ but it comes from the more ancient Sanskrit or Aryan stem ru or rau, meaning ‘one who makes a sound’; hence the inference. The occipitalis signifies the great width of the head, which really is prodigious, so the Latin name is not altogether absurd.
These frogs are very numerous in all cleared spaces of the jungle. They are aquatic, spending most of their time floating at the surface of the water with their protuberant eyes sticking out like periscopes. They grow to a length of about six inches and are very voracious, swallowing insects, spiders, crabs, smaller frogs, and most else that comes their way. Without them and their allies which inhabit the same waters, man would be in an even more sorry plight than he is at present in these lugubrious climes. They demolish countless myriads of mosquito larvæ per year, and without them these carriers of the mortal yellow fever and malaria would become so numerous that man would be driven from the country altogether.
Rana occipitalis is impeccably spotted below with black on his otherwise pure white belly. He was a sore subject to our native staff of skinners and trappers. Several large specimens were brought to us alive and placed in a large bowl with a lid weighted with stones. Needless to say, they all jumped in unison and made their escape while we were occupied elsewhere. They scattered far and wide before we discovered our loss. Some ‘made for bush,’ as the West African term is for going home to the vegetation; others behaved in a peculiar and decidedly questionable manner. They apparently found their way into the bedroom (or rather the space where we slept) and concealed themselves in a certain unmentionable article of bedroom furniture. I forthwith retired to rest with an attack of malaria.
As I lay under my mosquito net shivering and aching with the fever, strange metallic sounds were wafted up to me. I could not imagine where they were coming from or what they were. Time passed and the light began to fail. All of a sudden I forgot my fever as a raucous singsong clamor broke out beneath my ear. ‘Car-r-r-ach, car-r-r-ach,’ it went, reverberating through the room, and the stanchions of the mosquito net quivered in unison. I leapt out of bed convinced that my temperature had risen to the point of delirium. The noise ceased abruptly. I yelled for the household staff (No, I won’t call them ‘boys’!) and hurrying feet came out of the rapidly descending dusk.
‘Am I talking gibberish,’ I inquired, ‘or is there a peculiar whirring noise going on in here?’
Gong-Gong listened intently, but his face belied his concern for my mental condition. He did n’t hear anything, he assured me; I began to retire below the mosquito net. No sooner had I done so than it burst out afresh. GongGong dived under the bed.
‘Master, the beef!’ he shouted, pushing out an article of enameled furniture, from which sprang half a dozen eager amphibians.
The whole household turned out and a great pursuit began. All the frogs were eventually collared and drowned in the all-absorbing alcohol. I burst into a profuse sweat more from laughter than surprise, and another attack of malaria was satisfactorily overcome.
V
Such vermin as I have mentioned are common features of the inhabited parts of the land, but there are others more numerous and more essentially ‘verminous.’ The common toad (Bufo regularis) is the only source of food of the deadly night adder. This frog — for all toads are frogs, just as all gnats are mosquitoes and all dromedaries are camels, despite what your nurse or your schoolmaster may have told you when young — is an interesting animal notwithstanding its commonness and reputation. Toads are not evil, are quite harmless to handle, and, in fact, make intelligent though rather unconventional pets. Bufo regularis is not unlike our common toad, but its behavior is very different in many respects.
When we arrived in Africa in September, the mystic, though often rainy, nights were filled with strange noises. Predominant among these was a terrific, colossal, stupendous — and any other word the American film writer can think of—babel, created by our friend Bufo regularis. I eventually tracked down the nearest colony to a wellhead by the house which was crowded with individuals gathered together to mate and to ‘sing’ —which functions appear to be intimately linked in amphibian ethics.
The males were small and yellow, the females large and dark brown. Only the former ‘sing,’ but the power of their lungs, or rather of the special pouches in their throats, compensates for their mates’ inabilities. Colonies of toads are dotted about the countryside within hearing of each other. For a time all is silence, and only the whirring of the myriad nocturnal insects can be heard, a noise that is itself akin to silence by reason of its incessant stridence. All of a sudden one toad, acting as a sort of precentor, will begin, ‘ Quir-rrr-rrrwhirr, quir-rrr-rrr-whirr,’ into which the others of his colony join in perfect rhythm. Other colonies take it up until the whole countryside is deafened with the racket, which is as precise as a machine. All at once it ceases, as if every toad had been struck dead at the same instant by an electric current. Occasionally one choir far off will fail to stop and will carry on for a few seconds like an echo. The effect is very remarkable, and remains as unexpected as it is irritating throughout the night.
This behavior, concerned as it is with mating, was in full swing when we arrived in Africa. As the weeks passed, however, the rains ceased and the toads got done with their spawning. They then left their damp abodes and scattered over the drier country. They also quit their strident community singing and adopted a sort of ‘cluck-quack’ which they uttered incessantly but at irregular intervals throughout the night, and individually.
Still later in the year, when we were in the big river living on a sort of glorified punt, these busy little beasts were congregating on the sand banks, apparently waiting for the rains to come down and swell the rivers, making them thirty feet deeper and enabling the toads to gauge the safe limits of their spawning grounds. They seem to know that if the eggs are laid too close to the swiftly running stream they will be washed away and perish.
On one particular night we tied up alongside a narrow sand bar at the bottom of a deep gully clothed in virgin forest. When the paddlers had put away their gear and gone off to a near-by village, night descended on us, engulfing us in that world of ephemeral loveliness only known in the deep tropics, where the whole air is filled with lascivious smells and sounds. Gradually a roaring rose above the gentle swirl of the oily waters. Louder it grew, and still louder, like a gigantic turbine, though muffled and apparently coming from all directions at once. We shone the torch on to the sand bar, for it was now quite dark, and myriad pairs of little rubies leapt into being. There, crowded in thousands together, we saw the little toads all squatting with their eager little faces directed upstream. There must have been hundreds of thousands of them stretching as far as the eye could see, all pale fawn color, all with their little throats pumping in and out like tiny bellows as they called incessantly for the rains to fall and wash them up over the banks into the flooded forests beyond. We stepped out among them, and although scores leapt into the dark waters, thousands remained hopping around our feet, blinking their ruby-red eyes in the torchlight.
Here were the same toads we had seen yellow and black in Calabar, deep reddish brown on the grassy slopes of Mamfe station, mottled brown at other places, and now all light fawn in color. Protracted research eventually elucidated the puzzle, and here is the answer. The color of toads’ skins is produced by minute granules of color known as chromatophores. These congregate in tubular cells situated in the deeper layers of the skin. When the toads are in the water to breed, their skins are moist and transparent and the colors show through. Not only this: the changes of color produced by alteration of heat and light or by anger or fright, as in ourselves when we blush, may also be seen, and frogs have an ability in this respect far surpassing even the chameleon. Later, when they leave the water, the outer layers of their skin dry up and become opaque, and their colors duller and more static.
By the end of the year the skin is hardened and dead, so that practically all color except that of contained dust particles is gone, making them appear dusty and grayish brown like a dirty white handkerchief.
VI
No record of the ‘vermin’ of Mamfe should exclude man’s greatest little tropical friend the gecko, though it is an outrage to place his name even at the foot of the list. This little lizard, universal to hot countries in his manifold forms, appears mysteriously in any house as soon as it is inhabited. Running about the walls or stalking insects across the ceiling in his world that is upside down or tilted to an angle of ninety degrees or more, and uttering his shrill little chatters, this animal has been a friend indeed and in need to many a lonely man far away in the wilds. Night after night the little geckos will appear as the lights are lit, until each one becomes familiar, this with his recently broken tail, that with his all but new tail.
Geckos have been known to get so tame that they would come on to the table every night at dinnertime for titbits. After months’, even years’ absence, the resident in the tropics may return to his former quarters and on the second or third night there will be the little gecko standing eagerly by his plate, his great lustrous black eyes keenly watching, his precarious tail wagging like a tiny dog’s.
We had one such that lived in the drawer where we kept our skinning implements. Every morning he was disturbed when we got out our tools, but he persisted even after he lost his tail through getting entangled with a pair of compasses. He just shed his tail from the roots as if it were a useless umbrella and left it wriggling and squirming like another animal in the drawer. He soon grew another, but his affliction did n’t deter him from his nightly labors as self-appointed watchdog to us. Prowling about the ceiling, he would wait for some insect to settle, attracted by the lamplight. Then, whatever its size, — and there were many as large as himself, — he would stalk it just as a cat a mouse. Nearer he came, and nearer, until, forgetting his feline tactics, he would rush in like a terrier. Sometimes he missed; sometimes the beetle, moth, or praying mantis would fly off just as he was preparing to pounce; but if he caught it a great to-do commenced. The powerful insects fought to get free, but the little gecko worried and shook them until one would have thought the suckerlike pads on his feet must lose their grip on the ceiling to which they clung, in opposition to all the laws of gravity.
Only once did he fall, and that time he did it properly. He had seized a praying mantis a little over three inches long, and a strenuous fight ensued. So great was the noise that we put down our pens to watch. The mantis is a truly terrifying creature, apparently always willing to engage in a battle even with man. If one alights on the table before you it will stand up on four legs, turn its beastly head on its narrow neck, and stare you straight in the face with its evil protuberant eyes, at the same time presenting its two forearms crooked like a pugilist’s and bristling with rows of slender toothlike spines, with which it not only seizes its prey but also its mate, from both of which it sucks the lifeblood. In fact the love life of the mantis consists of this gruesome performance alone, for without it the male is unable to impregnate the female. Only in its writhing death agonies can it conclude the act of copulation, a thought that might well be pondered by some of our modern sociologists.
Such was the antagonist our little friend had assaulted. The struggle was protracted and the mantis was strong. Suddenly the combatants fell with a crash, squarely into my cup of tea, sending it showering all over me and my work. The gecko was none the worse, but somewhat dazed and utterly amazed. Had I not fished him out, he would have assuredly drowned. I placed him under the lamp to dry off, which he did at his leisure while I dispatched the mantis, for I dislike these vampires.
When the gecko had recovered himself, I proffered the still writhing torso of the insect, but he would have none of it. He allowed me to handle him without attempting to bite, a thing he had never done before; perhaps he knew I was a willing accomplice. Presently he trotted away to regain his exalted topsy-turvy world.
The body of the mantis remained on the table in two completely separate parts. Next morning at eleven-thirty it was still wriggling. I wonder if it was a male?
VII
We camped near the road because, while it lasted, it served as a useful method of getting about the otherwise almost impenetrable forest, and also because it was useful to know whether it was cloudy or fine and whether the wind was blowing or not, which was only discernible through this narrow cleft in the roof of the forest.
Along it we wandered with shotguns and field glasses, in the heat of the evening — at least so we judged by our watches, for the degree of light was always somewhat crepuscular.
I was thus lazily employed on the third day after our arrival in the forest, when all our gear had been stored in a shipshape manner and mysterious little bush-stick and green-leaf houses had finished sprouting up around the domains occupied by the communal cooking fire. I carried my shotgun gingerly while I navigated myself from root to root and boulder to boulder, my mind filled with reminiscences of cleaning four hundred traps, and forebodings of the imminent collapse of the tent, which appeared to be only a matter of time.
All at once I was arrested by a sound that I could have sworn was an organized revolt on the part of my own stomach against the unnamed muddle that had been forced into it at lunchtime. A little confused, with that unreasoning but inbred bashfulness born of civilized ethics, I paused, prepared for the indignity to repeat itself. Sure enough, it did, but from somewhere among the foliage to the left of the path.
Such a phenomenon, when encountered for the first time, is arresting to say the least; yet it very soon became the second time, then the third, then the fourth, until I began to feel quite used to it. I have dined with a most illustrious Chinese family, also with the inmates of a Balinese seminary, who both showed their appreciation of the ample fare provided for them, with great gusto, in this unmistakable though to the European mind somewhat unconventional and rude manner. But the little chorus that went on around me as I waited silently in the African jungle surpassed the wildest fancies of the Orient.
When I moved, the babble (or gurgle) mysteriously died away. This was repeated several times until I began to wonder whether, after all, it was not a trick of the forest, with its unaccountable echoings and ghostlike sighings, which I had begun to appreciate so well. When I paused again at the bottom of the gully, however, the local intestinal disturbances became almost deafening, and I conceived a strong desire to see the perpetrators of this outstanding performance. Every time I moved to try to peer among the undergrowth, the noise ceased abruptly, only to commence again more loudly than ever. Annoyed and mystified, I crouched in the path among the roots, waiting for my tormentors to show their hands, or any other portions of their anatomies.
As they did not do so, but were getting uncomfortably close on both sides of the path, I conceived a plan. By a method learned at school and employed with marked success around the coffeepot in the less accessible parts of the Orient, I joined the chorus, weakly at first, but with ever-increasing volume — if I may put it that way. The results were beyond my wildest hopes — and, for that matter, fears. The accompaniment of my jungle acquaintances came closer around me, though I had thought that they were already as close as they could be without showing themselves.
This was very awkward, for it now appeared that they were of considerable size, and, if judged by the only sounds they uttered in comparison with the same produced by man, they would have been about twice the size of an elephant. I indulged in a hurried zoölogical stocktaking of all the inhabitants of the West African tropical forests that I knew of. Nothing seemed to fit the case except chimpanzees and bush pigs, yet the former should be away up in the trees and the latter would certainly have given other fair warning of their identity. I consequently gained in inquisitiveness though also in uneasiness.
A few moments later I had dropped positively all inquisitiveness, unbefitting as it may be for a zoölogist to admit it. Suddenly before me sat a most menacing figure, apparently wrapped in a gray shawl, and scrutinizing me with a pair of unpleasantly piercing eyes from beneath a scowling brow. He (or she) and I both ceased our visceral mutterings promptly and uttered a surprised ‘Uh’ so precisely in unison that I got an overpowering desire to giggle. This was, however, as quickly wafted away also, when zoölogical reasoning came to an abrupt halt. I had not suspected that drills (Mandrillus leucophœus), though baboons of a sort, went about in large, belching parties.
Now I had met baboons before, and although I took a great interest in their behavior and should have liked to return to camp with a fine specimen such as now sat complacently before me, I remembered that discretion was always the better part of valor when in their presence. I therefore stood up to go, trying to be as unhurried as I imagined I should be at a vicarage tea party, though I have never attended one. This simple movement, however, was heralded by unmistakable complaints from all sides in the form of the most unpleasant grunts. The old lady (or gentleman) before me also rose, but on all fours so that his or her posterior came into view. It happened to be bright pink at this time of the year, and I thought of that absurd Homeric description of the dawn as being ‘rosyfingered.’
This display had remarkable effects. The bushes parted on all sides and a surprising array of subhumanity presented itself, ranging from one obvious male of quite alarming proportions to the merest tiddlers with pale, flat faces quite unlike their dog-nosed, blackvisaged elders and betters. Their movements were leisurely, as if they were taking their places for a boxing match; they chattered and grunted exactly like any crowd of pleasure-seeking human beings preparing for an entertaining display.
While all this taking-of-seats was going on, I was retreating gingerly backwards up the path, while trying to learn the rules of monkey ethics in the raw. The outsize gentleman, however, seemed to have been appointed as doorman. He trotted into the path behind me and stood squarely upon three boulders, one for each back foot and one for his gnarled hands. This was all very unpleasant, and I found myself waiting with some trepidation to see what was the next item on the agenda. As they continued to sit and grunt to each other, it appeared to be up to me.
I don’t expect you have ever been surrounded by a troop of expectant baboons, but if you have you will probably agree that it becomes extremely difficult to think up any suitable parlor tricks. Personally, my mind was a blank, especially as each part of the circle to which my back was turned in succession seemed to think its chance had come to grab a ringside seat, and, since one can’t face all ways at once, the ring began to diminish rapidly. I remember thinking, stoically and hopefully, that drills are vegetable feeders and that I was not a vegetable although I doubtless looked like one. When the old gentleman yawned, however, and I had a glimpse of his three-inch fangs, I began to doubt the words of wisdom uttered by the worthy professor of my late and, at that moment, greatly lamented university.
I did remember that almost any animal, even a surprised tiger, will shy away if one stoops to pick up a stone and make pretense of throwing it. This I instantly put to the test, but in my excitement I picked up a stone and accidentally hurled it at the big yawning male with a force of which I did not believe myself capable. We were all greatly surprised when it found its mark in a glancing blow. This, combined with my sudden action, made the spectators jump backwards with some emphasis, so that I was given quite a lot of room to move about in. My target seemed quite angry, as might be expected, and, as I stooped to gather more missiles, he waltzed about and returned the compliment with some vigor, scraping the ground with his hind feet, gathering up a small boulder in the process, and projecting it straight at me with considerable accuracy.
This heralded a great commotion. Apparently the show had begun. I hurled more stones in all directions, and although the admiring onlookers retreated each time, those on the opposite side advanced, the gentleman who had yawned so indulgently most of all. He was now very angry indeed, projecting stones and big blobs of spittle at me alternately as he waltzed about, presenting first his revolting, doglike visage and then his still more revolting and quite uncanine other end.
These tactics, combined with other stones and the fast-descending dusk, made me not only definitely frightened, but inexplicably angry, too. Once I nearly put a charge of lead into him, but luckily checked myself, realizing that this trump card would be even more useful later on when the difference of opinion became general, as matters appeared to be rapidly drifting in that direction.
During one of the periodic lulls between these diplomatic interchanges, now carried on in a more or less tense silence, one of the smallest and most youthful of my audience uttered a peevish squeal and bowled a small lump of earth at me, just as an underhand lob-bowler in a juvenile cricket match would do. The action was so ludicrous that in my decidedly agitated frame of mind I burst into roars of laughter. Why it seemed so screamingly funny I don’t know; perhaps it was n’t really so at all. But my action proved a most fortunate one.
The brat’s mother made a dive at her now cowering and shivering progeny, gathered it to her bosom, and bolted, followed by several other mothers and their offspring. The remaining ‘stag party,’ numbering some dozen, began running to and fro, looking surprised and angry. I continued laughing and shouting as if I were at a football match, and soon became quite incoherent from sheer nerves. I advanced on the old male, shouting, ‘They’ve made a goal! Run, run, you old idiot! Bonjour, mademoiselle, cochon! Nunca café con leche!’ — at the same time executing a spine-rocking rhumba combined with all the other outlandish dances in my repertoire. He stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes opened wide and his whole face took on a quite ludicrously human expression. He muttered to himself. ‘Standing aghast’ was the only way to describe his poise, as if he were just as much shocked at my behavior as he was bewildered and frightened at what he saw. A few seconds he stood his ground, amazement written all over his face; then his nerve gave way and he shied like a dog. His final rout was accompanied by a flood of the choicest swearing from my cockney vocabulary.
With his hurried retreat ‘to bush,’ my way home was open before me; I wasted no time in taking it, swearing and bellowing with full conviction. Once on the crest of the incline, I sent a couple of shots below in an ecstasy of human bravado and with a feeling of bombastic superiority toward the mere beasts of the field over whom the power of speech had cast such a spell.
(To be continued)