Gerald Durrell (34 page)

“I’ve lost two
sunbirds, fortunately not the best ones. I think they were frightened off the
perches and just flew around madly, you know, when we went over that very bad
bit of road. Everything else seems fairly steady, but I’ll be glad to get them
on board and feed and water them. How are your things?”

“One Drill’s got
his hand bashed rather badly, stupid little fool. I think he pushed it through
the wire just as we went over a bump, and got it crushed by another crate. But
that will heal up O.K. That’s my only casualty, thank God. The Angwantibos are
all right, but they seem a bit scared.”

After a delay
that to us seemed interminable, for we could not feed or clean any of our
beasts, a train dragging a row of empty carriages drew alongside, and we were
told that we could load our crates on it. As we hoisted the last crate on to
the train it started to rain again, but not the gentle drifting drizzle that it
had been before. No, as we were out in the open and unprotected, the Cameroons
decided to show us what she could do in the way of rain. Within seconds all our
crates were running with water and the staff, John and myself looked as though
we had been dipped in a water tank. Slowly the train jerked its way along the
lines, dragging us nearer and nearer to the ship; at last we were alongside,
and with all speed the crates were got aboard. I was shivering again and felt
like death. Remembering the doctor’s warning about a relapse, I hurried down to
our cabin and changed into some dry clothes, and then went in search of the
chief steward. That understanding man took me into his cabin and poured me out
a whisky that could have knocked out a horse, and I felt the warmth of it
spreading along my veins. I took some of the tablets the doctor had given me
and literally staggered up on deck. Every one of my cages was sopping wet, and
the inmates as well. I had to set to and clean each one, scraping out the
sodden sawdust and replacing it with dry, and then throwing handfuls of sawdust
over the monkeys to try and dry some of the moisture from their dripping fur.
Then I made them hot milk and fed them on fruit and bread, for the poor little
things were shivering with cold, and I knew that unless I got them dry before
nightfall some would most certainly catch pneumonia. After the monkeys I
cleaned and fed the Angwantibos, which fortunately had escaped the full force
of the rain as they had been sheltered by other crates.

By this time the
effects of the whisky had worn off and I began to feel worse and worse. The
deck appeared to be heaving and twisting, and my head felt as big as a pumpkin
and ready to burst with the pain and throbbing inside it. I began to feel
really frightened for the first time: having got on board the ship I did not
want to pass out gracefully and be carried off to hospital, leaving John to
face the voyage home with two men’s work to do. I crawled down to our cabin and
flung myself on to the bunk. Presently John came down to tell me that he had
more or less got his birds under control, and within half an hour he would be
able to give me a hand with the animals, but I had sunk into a deep and restful
sleep. When I awoke I felt a different person, and I sallied up on deck still
feeling a bit dizzy, but now quite sure that I was not going to die. I finished
off the night feed, hung blankets over the front of the monkeys’ and the
Angwantibos’ cages, and then prepared Sue’s evening bottle. She screamed
lustily when she saw it coming, so the wetting did not appear to have done her any
harm. At last everything was done for the night and I could relax, easy in my
mind for the first time in two days. I leant on the rail and gazed at the dank
and forbidding view of the banana groves and mangrove swamps, and the rain
drummed incessantly on the canvas awning above me. Presently John joined me,
having completed his tasks, and we smoked in silence, gazing out into the rain.

“I don’t think
people realize what a job collecting is,” said John reflectively, glancing at
the dark bulk of his cages, “they don’t know the difficulties. Now look at us
to-day: we might quite easily have lost the whole collection in that shower of
rain. But they never think of that when they see the things in the zoo.”

“Well, you can’t
really expect them to. They think that it’s as easy as it apparently was for
Noah.”

“Noah!” snorted
John in disgust. “If Noah had a fifth part of what he was supposed to have
carried the Ark would have sunk.”

“All those
different species of birds and mammals we’ve seen and collected! If he had only
confined himself to what he could get here the Ark would have been overloaded.”

“It strikes me”,
said John, yawning, “that we’ve got an overloaded Ark on our hands with just
the few things we’ve got.” He gestured at our hundred-odd crates. “Well, I’m
going to bed. What time do we sail?”

“About midnight,
I think. I’ll follow you down in a minute.”

John went below,
and I stood gazing out into the darkening and rain-striped landscape. Suddenly,
between the trees, I saw a small fire spring up, glowing like a red heart in
the darkness. Presently, very softly, someone started to play a drum, and I
could hear the husky voices of the banana loaders take up the theme. The fire
flickered, heart-like, and the drum throbbed, heart-like, in the darkness and
the rain. The voices sang softly, chanting a song that was as old as the great
forests. A song that was harsh and primitive, yet plaintive and sweet, a song
such as the god Pan must have sung. As I watched the pulsing fire among the
trees, and heard the beat of the drum merge and tremble with the voices,
forming an intricate pattern of sound, I knew that some day I would have to
return, or be haunted forever by the beauty and mystery that is Africa.

FINALE

THE voyage home
is not the easiest part of a collecting trip, though one might be inclined to
think so. It was fourteen days of extremely hard work for us, but our reward
was that we lost only two specimens: one was a bird that had been unwell when
we came on the ship, and so its death was no surprise; the second loss was a
mongoose which somehow escaped from its cage and, for no apparent reason,
walked straight through the rails and into the sea before I could grab it.

I have heard it
said that all you have to do is to slip a pound to a member of the crew and
then more or less forget your collection until you dock. But even supposing you
were to find a member of the crew with that amount of time on his hands (which
is unlikely), you would have none of your rarest and most delicate specimens
left alive when you arrived, for the man, with all the goodwill in the world,
would not know how to look after them. No, I’m afraid it’s not as easy as that.
You have to crawl out of your bunk at some unearthly hour of the morning to
start the first feed, and from then on there is not a moment of the day that
you have free.

Sue was my great
problem on the voyage: while in camp she had spent all day sprawled on my bed,
getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine. I did not want to keep her closed up
in her little wooden cage all the time, yet I was afraid to let her lie on deck
for she had just started to crawl, and I did not want her to follow the
mongoose through the rails and into the Atlantic. So I had a conference with
the chief steward and explained my problem. After some thought he disappeared
and returned shortly afterwards carrying a large babies’ play-pen. Apparently
some lady travelling with her child had left it on board, and I blessed her for
this kind if unintentional action. It was duly erected on deck in a nice
sheltered position, filled with blankets, and Sue placed within. She thought it
was grand fun, and after a few days could stand upright by holding on to the
top bar. True, she fell heavily on to her ample bottom each time the ship
roiled, but she could stand upright for a few seconds at a time, and she felt
this was quite an achievement. There was also a delightful arrangement let into
the side of the pen: several rows of coloured beads that slid up and down on
wire. Sue thought these were marvellous, and would spend hours shooting them up
and down, or sucking them hopefully.

The crew, of
course, were captivated by her, and they spent all their spare time standing
round the play-pen talking to her, or tickling her fat tummy. It was quite
ludicrous to see great hairy stokers (who looked as though they had not a
pennyweight of sentimentalism in their make-up) leaning over the play-pen and
talking baby-talk to a thumb-sucking chimpanzee, reclining at ease on a soft
bed of blankets. The day that Sue walked three steps, clutching wildly at the
sides of the pen for support, four or five members of the crew, who happened to
have been present at this earth-shaking event, came dashing round to tell me
about it, as excited as though Sue had been their own joint offspring. I am
quite sure that, had I wanted it, I could have had the entire engine-room staff
knitting tiny garments for her, such was her hold on them.

The other
animals got their fair share of attention as well. Should one of the monkeys
develop a cold or a cough the news of this catastrophe would spread through the
ship in record time, and soon various members of the crew would be coming up to
me with handfuls of sugar or other titbits “for the sick one, mate”. The cook
and his various assistants always saved the more choice left-oven for their
special favourites, and high on this list was, of course, George. He took all
this spoiling as a matter of course, and would sit in his cage with a regal
expression on his face, accepting whatever was pushed through the bars with a
fine air of condescension. Only once during the voyage did he misbehave
himself. Sparks, the radio operator, was one of those who always came and
talked to George and, so he might better see the baboon in the dim interior of
its cage, he would don a massive pair of horn-rimmed glasses. George was
captivated by these, and waited his chance to investigate them further. One day
Sparks bent too close to the cage and in a second George had reached out and
whipped the coveted glasses into his cage. It took me a long time to get him to
give them up again, but he had handled them so carefully that when he did
return them they were fortunately unbroken.

We were lucky
with the weather on the homeward voyage, for it remained calm and fine until we
reached the outskirts of the Bay of Biscay; here the sea was leaden and
heaving, and a fine cold drizzle fell, so we would have known, without being
told, that we were approaching England. From our point of view these last few
days were the worst, for the temperature dropped and a wild cold wind sprang up
and whistled among our cages, making the specimens shiver. If a monkey caught a
chill now there was little chance of it recovering. Blankets and tarpaulins
were draped over the cage fronts, and the monkeys had hot milk each morning,
and again at night. The ship rolled her way round Land’s End, the lighthouse
blinking encouragingly at us as we gave the midnight feed, and then up the
Irish Sea. Then, one dank grey morning we could see the gilded misshapen birds
that perch on the top of the Unilever buildings, and we knew that we had
reached Liverpool. Our voyage, with all its worries and troubles, was over.
Soon would come the greatest joy of all: to see our specimens come out of their
cramped cages and stretch themselves after so many months of close confinement.

Unloading your
animals from a ship is always a trying business, but at last all the cages were
stacked on the docks, and we could start loading them into the zoo vans. The
Angwantibos, busy trotting through the branches in their cages, were destined
for London Zoo; George, grinning through the bars of his cage, and Sue, still
practising press-ups in spite of the noise and confusion, together with the
Drills, the Black-legged Mongoose and many of John’s birds, were all going to
live down at Paignton Zoo, in Devon. The Guenons were to take up residence in
the new monkey house at Chester Zoo, and the rest of the creatures were to be
distributed between the zoos at Manchester and Bristol.

Eventually, the last
cage was stowed away, and the vans bumped their way across the docks through
the fine, drifting rain, carrying the animals away to a new life, and carrying
us towards the preparations for a new trip.

INDEX

ANGWANTIBO (
Arctocebus
calabarensis
)

ANT, Driver (
Dorylus
sp.
)

BAT, Fruit (
Rousettus
angolensis
)

BULBUL, Gaboon (
Pycnonotus
barbatus gabonensis
)

CHAT,
Blue-shouldered Robin (
Cossypha cyanocampter
)

CHAMELEON,
Flap-necked (
Chamaeleon cristatus
)

Horned (
Chamaeleon  oweni
)

Pygmy (
Rhampholeon spectrum
)

CHIMPANZEE (
Anthropopithecus
troglodytes satyrus
)