09 Lion Adventure (7 page)

A little more trouble was caused by a herd of elephants. They completely blocked the road. Along African roads are posted signs reading, ‘Elephants have the right of way.’ If there were elephants in the road you did not blow your horn - that would annoy them and invite a charge. You did not flash your lights - that also would be taken by them as an insult. You did not try to push by them - they would push harder than you could and they were quite likely to upset the car and sit on it.

You just turned off your motor and waited. Hal did exactly that. He waited fifteen minutes, a half hour, while Roger grew more and more restless.

The elephants were sucking up dirt from the road and flinging it over their backs. They had found from experience that a coat of dirt was the best protection against biting insects.

‘We can’t wait here all day,’ Roger said. ‘Turn on the motor - perhaps that will scare them off.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Hal. ‘But I’ll try it.’

He flipped on the ignition. It was the wrong thing to do. The big ears went out, trunks went up, and the leading bull let out a terrific scream. The whole herd began to move towards the car.

Hal slipped the gears into reverse and backed down the road at all the speed the engine would give him. It was not enough. The herd was gaining on him. Just one elephant could smash a car - what would two dozen of them do?

Then help came from the sky. The balloon, which could not travel as fast as the car, trailed lower and lower until it bumped the backs of the elephants.

This tremendous beast has little fear of anything on earth. But he is not used to being bombarded from above. With shrill screams of terror the elephants plunged off both sides of the road into the woods.

Hall stopped, then drove forward. The great bag climbed back into the sky.

‘A little lower and it would have lost gas,’ said Hal, much relieved that the biggest land animal on earth had met its match in something even bigger.

‘Good old Jules Verne,’ said Roger. ‘He came to our rescue just in time.’

The arrival of the balloon in the railway camp created a sensation. Every man stopped work to stare at the great round ball in the sky.

‘Now, if we can just find a good anchor,’ Hal said.

‘How about that log?’ said Roger. He pointed out a fallen trunk some fifty feet long. ‘That’s heavy enough to hold down a dozen balloons. All we have to do is tie our trail line to that.’

Hal grinned. ‘You make it sound very simple,’ he said. ‘But just how do you propose to get the trail line off the car and on to the log?’

‘Untie it - then you and I hold the balloon down until we tie up to the log.’

‘What makes you think we two can hold it down? Don’t forget-—there were three of us in that basket and the balloon didn’t drop one inch. Just two of us hanging on to a loose trail line would find ourselves in heaven in ten seconds.’

‘All right,’ Roger said. ‘Get eight or ten of the men to hold the balloon down while we tie up to the log.’

‘Have you forgotten King Ku’s orders - that we must work alone?’

The two sat down on the log and thought How could two boys do the work of ten men? It was impossible. King Ku was asking too much. Roger raised his head. ‘I’m going to try something.’ He went to the car and came back with a length of rope. He tied one end securely to the trail line and the other to the log. Then he loosened the trail line from the car. The balloon bobbed up a few feet but was checked by the new line. Roger made fast the trail line to the log.

He stuck out his chest. ‘Quite simple,’ he said cockily. Tt didn’t need your ten men - some brains, that’s all.’

Hal smiled. His feelings were a mixture of annoyance that he had not thought of this simple trick, and pride in his kid brother who had thought of it.

The boys were eager to climb to the basket and begin their watch. But there was something Roger wanted to do first - feed Flop. They took their supplies from the car and went to the tent. Flop had made himself comfortable in Roger’s bed.

Roger, a bit weary, lay down on the bed beside his pet. Then he came out of the bed like a bolt of lightning. His neck and cheek were well scratched.

Flop, disturbed in his sleep, had done what all lions do upon awakening. He had stretched out his legs with all his claws out, thrusting one paw into Roger’s face and the other into his neck.

Now he opened his eyes wide in an innocent stare, then waddled up on to his four big feet and demanded dinner with a loud miaow.

Hal mixed milk with cod liver oil, glucose, bonemeal, and salt in the proper proportions and Roger fed the little beast with the help of the bamboo mother.

This time Roger did not bother with disinfectant. The cub’s scratches were harmless; he was not yet a meat-eater so there would be no rotting flesh under his claws.

Back to the balloon. Hal and Roger climbed the swaying rope ladder.

The wind had come up and the basket was rolling like a ship in a rough sea. But not quite. At the end of each roll a ship’s rail goes down. This basket was more like a hammock. At the end of each swing a hammock goes up. They were being rocked in the cradle of the sky.

But they had been bounced too often in small planes to be bothered by the motion. Equipped with two pairs of binoculars, they began to scan the landscape.

The balloon was at about the middle point of the three-mile stretch of track on which the men were working. The binoculars easily enabled the boys to see a mile and a half in each direction. The country was open savannah, covered with tall tawny grass and punctuated here and there by bushes and termite bills a few feet high.

‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed Hal ‘Now we’re high enough to see behind all those things. If anything stirs in that grass without our spotting it, there’s no excuse for us.’

For an hour their binoculars combed the three miles of track and the fairly open country on each side between track and forest. Then Roger nudged his brother. He pointed.

‘Look - there. Just coming out of the woods. Four, five, six lions.’

‘Let’s go,’ said Hal. The words were hardly out of his mouth before he was over the side and sliding down the trail line. Roger followed. In less than twenty seconds they were in the car and speeding down the road that hugged the track. A minute later they tumbled out at the point nearest to the approaching group of lions.

The railway men looked up in surprise. They had been too intent on their work to notice the danger. Hal and Roger snatched two rifles from the car, crossed the track, and walked through the grass towards the lions.

None of the railway men could help them since they were forbidden to carry arms. They went back to their work, glancing anxiously now and then at the boys who were their only protection against six possible man-eaters. The lions came on slowly.

‘Perhaps they don’t mean any harm,’ Roger said.

‘How can we tell?’

Hal stripped off his shirt. He went a hundred feet forward and threw down the shirt, then returned to join Roger. .

The lions came up to the shirt, sniffed at it curiously, pawed it a little, then went off a short distance and lay down.

There’s your answer,’ Hal said. ‘There’s plenty of man-smell in that shirt. If they had been man-eaters they probably would have ripped it to bits.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said a voice behind them. They turned to see the white hunter who until now had avoided them.

‘I believe your name is Dugan,’ said Hal, extending his hand. Dugan shook it, but without enthusiasm. He was a lemon-faced fellow with bitter eyes and a sour twist to the corners of his mouth.

‘Just thought you might need a little help,’ Dugan said. ‘Six lions could be a bit too much for two inexperienced boys.’

Hal smiled. He would not trouble to explain his own long experience with animals. He was not going to let Dugan get his goat.

‘You could be wrong about the shirt,’ Dugan went on. ‘Lions are pretty sly. Perhaps they’re just pretending they don’t care about man-smell. Perhaps they just want to put you off your guard. Then they’ll pounce on you or on one of the men.’

‘I know that,’ Hal said. ‘But we have orders not to kill harmless lions. Since we can’t be absolutely sure whether they are harmless or not, let’s scare them back into the woods. Let’s shoot over their heads. Be very careful,’ he said to Roger, ‘not to hit one of them. If you do you’ll have King Ku and Tanga and the warden and everybody else down on us.’

‘Excellent idea,’ Dugan said with a mean smile and raised his gun. The three fired at the same instant.

The lions leaped to their feet and made off towards the woods. One lagged behind, and then fell. Hal looked at bis brother accusingly.

‘You shot him!’

‘I did not. I aimed six feet above their heads.’

‘Well, if you didn’t, who did?’ Hal wheeled around to face Dugan.

But Dugan was no longer there. He was running down the tracks towards the station.

The boys remained at their post for a time to be sure that the lions did not return. Then they cautiously approached the one that had fallen. It did not stir. The great golden-haired body was curled up as if in sleep. Blood welled from a bullet hole behind the left ear. It would be a long sleep.

Hal retrieved his shirt. Wearily, they went back to the station to report to Tanga. Hal began to explain, but Tanga cut him short.

‘Dugan has already told me about it,’ said the station master. ‘How could you possibly make such a mistake? Haven’t you ever had a gun in your hands before?’

Hal stared. ‘You mean - Dugan pinned it on us?’

‘Now look here,’ Tanga said irritably. ‘I don’t think too much of Dugan - but at least he knows how to fire a gun. After all, he’s a professional hunter. I should have kept him on the job. I was a fool to take on a couple of boys to do a man’s work.’

‘But listen,’ Hal said patiently. ‘You are perfectly right about one thing - Dugan knows how to fire a gun.

Doesn’t it occur to you that he may have killed that lion on purpose?’

‘Why should he do that?’ m

‘To make you think we did it. And apparently he succeeded. You yourself warned us that he would try to do for us. And now when he is doing just that you allow him to get away with it. We let him put one over on us. You are quite right - we are just boys and not very smart. But you, Tanga, you are a man - I never would have thought he could make a fool of you.’

The words went home. Tanga writhed in his chair.

‘I don’t know - I just don’t know,’ he said confusedly. ‘Anyhow I’ll have to tell King Ku.’

‘Go ahead and tell him,’ Hal said. ‘There’s one good thing about Ku. He’s enough of a devil to understand the devil in Dugan.’

Once again in their basket, the watchmen in the sky had the thrill of being able to see the world and yet not be a part of it.

They were on a planet of their own. Or they were men from Mars in a flying saucer investigating the Earth.

Every detail below stood out sharply - the campground, the roof of the station, the men at work on the tracks, the grassy plain and the woods beyond; to the west, Kilimanjaro raising its snowy head far above the clouds; to the north, the village of Gula on its hilltop; and not far west of it, Mombo village, so plainly visible that you could count the dogs.

In some ways, the balloon had it all over the plane. In a balloon you simply stood still in the sky and had a chance to look. In a plane you shot along at a speed of anywhere from a hundred miles an hour up to heaven knows what and if you saw anything that interested you it was gone before you could get your eyes fixed on it.

In the Jules Verne they were only a hundred feet up with a close view of everything. In a small plane they would be riding a mile high, or seven miles high in a |et

Much of the time there would be a carpet of clouds beneath you hiding the earth. Even if the air were clear

the far-away features of the land below would be little more than a blur.

And you would be peering out of a tight little window filmed over with dust or mist, or smudged with grease where the heads of passengers had rested against it. In a few minutes you would give up trying to see anything and would bury yourself in a magazine.

Standing free in an open basket, not cooped in by walls and windows, with a sweeping view on all sides, the idea of reading a magazine was the last thing that would cross your mind.

The train from Mombasa rolled in. Two women stepped out of the train and stood uncertainly on the station platform. Their voices which could not have been heard a hundred feet away on the ground rose easily a hundred feet to the perch in the sky.

Bless my soul,’ said one. ‘What a godforsaken place.’

‘Wonder how we get a taxi,’ said the other.

They approached an African dozing on a bench.

‘Pardon me, how do we get to Kitani Safari Lodge?’

The man opened sleepy eyes and waved his hand as if brushing away flies.

‘He doesn’t understand us. Dear me, what can we do?’

Hal leaned over the edge of the basket. ‘I beg your pardon - can I help you?’

The women stared at each other.

‘Who said that? Did you hear it?’

‘Someone speaking English.’

They looked at the African on the bench. He was asleep. They looked all around.

‘I could swear—’

‘Don’t swear, lady,’ Hal said. ‘Look up.’

They looked up and gave vent to their astonishment in a little scream.

‘Patricia, do you see what I see? A balloon. Of all things!’

‘It can’t be real.’

‘What are you doing up there, young man?’

Hal laughed. ‘Just waiting to serve you. What’s your trouble?’

‘We want to go to Kitani Safari Lodge.’

‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck for a while. The Lodge car will come to meet the Nairobi train.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Two hours from now.’

‘Two hours! Young man, we’re American tourists. We’re not used to that kind of service. Two hours indeed! What are we going to do in the meantime?’

‘You could sit in the station.’