Call of the Raven
Page 23
With a splash, the bow tipped forward and slid down into deep water again. Mungo had been so busy concentrating on his task, he had lost sight of his surroundings. Now he looked up, and his spirits leaped. They had come through the swamp, and were looking into a broad lake behind it. In the distance, the unmistakable course of a great brown river led lazily into the interior.
The men gave a cheer. They piled back into the cutter, smearing her thwarts with mud, and took up their oars with new strength. Once they were out in clear water, Mungo hoisted the sail so that the men could rest. They marvelled at their new surroundings, while Mungo steered into the river mouth.
‘If we could get the Raven through the swamp, I reckon we could bring her up here as easy as the Patapsco River in Maryland,’ he said.
He studied the riverbanks, which teemed with wildlife: deer and antelope in herds of thousands; crocodiles basking on the mud; brightly feathered birds squawking from the trees. There was no sign of human habitation. A fierce joy rose in Mungo’s heart. The fates had tested his resolve, but he had come through.
‘This is where we will make our fortunes,’ he declared, to more cheers from the men.
As the sun sank, they turned back downriver to return to the Raven. By now, the tide was flooding in again, making their passage through the marshes much easier. They dropped buoys to mark the approach so they could find their way back, and put a man in the bow to take soundings with the lead line. As Mungo had suspected, at high tide there would be just enough draught for the Raven to slip through the channel into the river estuary.
That night, he broached a cask of rum and let the men celebrate. The next morning, nursing their hangovers, they worked the Raven through the reeds and into the river delta. Nosing cautiously upriver, Mungo was pleased to find they could sail several miles inland before the water grew too shallow. They anchored in the stream, went ashore and set a rough camp in the shade of some high-spreading trees. The first thing Mungo had them do was to rig a furnace where they could cast bullets. The reason for it became clear when they unloaded a huge case that had been stowed in the weapons locker, so heavy it took three men to carry. Mungo summoned Tippoo and flung it open. The smell of gun oil wafted out. The giant stared in wonder.
‘Jenna al-mootfah,’ he murmured in Arabic. He lifted out the biggest gun any man there had ever seen. Its barrel was so wide you could fit a plum down it. ‘Did a rifle mate with a cannon?’
‘I had it custom-made in Baltimore,’ said Mungo.
He had had no idea what it might take to bring down an elephant, and neither did the gunsmith. Mungo had told him to err on the side of caution, and the gunsmith had embraced his instructions with enthusiasm. The gun was a smooth-bore monstrosity that could take a quarter-pound ball and ten drachms of the strongest powder. The gunsmith had nicknamed it ‘Goliath’.
Tippoo lifted it out of the box and cradled it in his arms. The weight made even his biceps swell with the effort.
‘And what do you use?’
Mungo took another gun out of the chest. Set beside Tippoo’s weapon it looked as slender as a beanpole, but that was misleading. It was a double-barrelled gun, Damascus steel, smooth-bored so that the oversized balls would not be slowed by the rifling. The bullets were smaller than the Goliath gun’s, but with a narrower muzzle and a strong powder charge they should fire with more power. Mungo hoped it would be enough to penetrate the elephants’ thick hides.
There were guns for the rest of the men too, the latest Hall rifles with breech-loading mechanisms and percussion caps instead of flintlocks. Mungo was not sure how much damage they would do, but at least the men would be able to reload quickly. Perhaps with rapid fire they could make sufficient small wounds to bring down an animal, or at least enough noise to scare it away.
For a week, the men practised their shooting on the herds of game they found everywhere around them. The sailors were unaccustomed to hunting on land, but Mungo had grown up stalking deer with his father at Windemere. He taught them how to read the breeze and stay downwind of their prey, how to sight their guns on moving targets, how to creep stealthily through the long grass.
Often, he despaired of them. They were men of the sea; even walking on land was something they did but rarely, and awkwardly. But gradually they improved, and the game was so plentiful that every night they dined on freshly butchered venison.
Elephants never came down to drink at the river – Mungo guessed they feared the crocodiles – but once or twice he saw a herd on the horizon. The sight quickened his heart. He begrudged each day he had to spend training the men. As soon as he thought they were ready, they shouldered their guns and struck out in that direction. He had never hunted such great beasts before; he had little idea what to expect.
Every tusk you take is another coin to buy your revenge on Chester, he told himself.
He touched the locket around his neck. It was a beautiful country, so different from anything he had known. He wished he could have shown it to Camilla.
They reached the rise where he had seen the elephants previously. Smashed trees and stripped leaves showed where they had passed, but of the animals themselves there was no sign.
‘What now?’
Tippoo didn’t answer. Instead, he pointed to a mound of huge, round turds dried out by the sun.
‘Follow the shit.’
Once they had found the spoor, it was not hard to read. They traced it for miles, through high grass and thorn trees. The hard ground made it difficult to tell how many beasts they were chasing, or how recently they had passed – but the piles of dung grew ever fresher.
After about eight miles, the grassland gave way to thicker jungle. The elephant tracks split up, meandering in different directions.
‘Which way?’ Tippoo asked.
Mungo peered through the foliage. The jungle was mostly tough acacia trees, with curving thorns as sharp and strong as fish-hooks. A man who entered it would soon find himself caught on those spikes, unable to move without tearing his clothes to shreds. Or if they caught in his flesh, he might never move again.
It was too dense. Choosing at random, he turned left and began skirting around the edge of the jungle, looking for broken branches that would reveal the elephants’ way in. He had expected to find it quickly, yet two miles later the jungle wall remained as impenetrable as ever.
They had been out for hours. The sun was sinking towards the horizon, and in these tropical latitudes night would fall quickly. They would not make it back to camp before dark. They would have to bivouac where they could, and risk whatever predators lurked in the jungle.
Mungo’s thoughts darkened with frustration. The plan he had formed to bring Chester down relied on acquiring a fortune. Every dollar that he had inherited from Rutherford had been sunk into this venture to make the profit he needed. Yet even now, with evidence of the elephants’ presence all around him, they remained tantalisingly elusive. Had fate brought him to this place simply to taunt him?
He knew he should turn back, but some stubborn part of him could not admit defeat. He carried on, leaving the others trailing behind. Through a cluster of bushes, around a stand of trees, and . . .
There they were.
Two elephants, old and grey and huge, with long heavy tusks jutting from their faces. They stood at the edge of the jungle, stripping leaves from the trees and chewing them noisily.
They had not seen him. Mungo stared, frozen in the surprise of the moment. Then he reached for his gun. Silently, he slipped it off his shoulder and raised it to fire.
A breath of a breeze disturbed the still air. So faint, it barely tickled the hairs on the back of his neck, but it was enough to betray him. He was upwind of the elephants – the air carried his scent straight to them.
With a frightened blast, they charged forward into the jungle. Boughs snapped; branches scattered. Saplings were uprooted and trampled to the ground. Before Mungo could even get off a shot, they had vanished into the jungle.
Tippoo came into view, sweating hard under the weight of his enormous gun. Without explaining, Mungo started to run again, following the edge of the jungle as it curved around to the north. Sweat ran down his eyes; a stitch throbbed in his side. Still the jungle continued unbroken. Perhaps it never ended, he thought, and he would keep running until he reached the far shore of Africa.
He paused, panting. The breeze blew over the sweat on his cheeks and cooled him. No longer from behind, he realised, but straight into his face. Glancing at the low sun, he saw that he had come right around the far side of the patch of jungle.
If the elephants had come out this way, there should be signs where they had broken through. He saw nothing. They must still be in the jungle, taking refuge among the dense vegetation and thorn bushes.
Earlier, Mungo had thought the jungle was impassable. Now, the knowledge that the elephants were in there made him reckless, heedless of his own safety. He plunged in, crawling on his belly to avoid the worst of the thorn bushes. Even so, he could not entirely escape their hooks. They plucked at his clothes and scratched his skin. One wickedly curved spike came so close he felt it brush his eyelash. A fraction closer and it would have blinded him. Still he went on, pausing every so often to listen for the elephants. It was impossible to imagine such huge animals being silent, yet he heard nothing except the chatter of insects, the calls of unfamiliar birds, and Tippoo struggling along behind him. The loyal giant had followed Mungo into the forest, though his bulk meant he took more of the brunt of the thorns. When Mungo glanced back, he saw Tippoo’s face had become a mask of rivulets of blood.
A deep sigh whispered through the forest. It sounded so human, Mungo thought it must be Tippoo – but he could hear his friend breathing hard over his shoulder. The noise had come from somewhere ahead.
It sounded again, guttural and low. And something else – a slapping sound like a sail filling with wind.
There could only be one thing in the jungle large enough to make that noise.
The elephants must not be far away – a few paces at most. Yet the jungle was so thick it screened them entirely. Checking that the wind was still against him, Mungo wriggled forward and stared.
A large grey shape stood amid the foliage, barely ten feet away. It kept so still Mungo could hardly be sure if it was an animal or simply shadow. Only its ears moved, flapping against its side to make the slapping sound he had heard. It was straining to listen.
It could not smell Mungo, but it knew he was there. Where was its mate? Mungo searched the undergrowth. As his eyes adjusted to the patterns of the jungle, he realised there were more grey shapes behind the first one. Not just the second elephant he had seen earlier – there seemed to be a whole herd, perhaps twenty of them.
He was so close, if they took fright now and stampeded towards him he would be crushed under their massive feet. Hemmed in by the thorns, he would not even be able to roll away.
He did not move. He did not make a sound. Even that was not enough. Whether he was close enough that they smelled him, or if it was simple animal intuition, the elephants took fright. One moment the jungle was almost preternaturally still; the next it exploded into motion and chaos. The ground shook; cries echoed through the jungle.
He could not let them get away again. Thorns tore his skin and ripped his flesh as he pressed forward; in ordinary times he could not have stomached the pain, but now he was oblivious to it. With a final push that left a chunk of his hand hanging from a branch, he broke through into the clearing that the elephants had trampled.
It was like stepping into a giant, deadly game of ninepins, where every piece was ten feet high and weighed six tons. Terrified elephants blundered about, knocking into each other and braying desperately.
Through the dust clouds that swirled around, Mungo sighted his weapon on the largest animal he could see, aiming for the hollow behind the ear. The left barrel of his gun belched fire; the bullet struck. But in the chaos, it was not accurate enough. The ball penetrated the skin but not the heart. All it did was enrage the animal and frighten his companions. They fled from the noise of the gun, bunching together at the far end of the clearing. The thorn trees grew so thick there even the combined mass of the elephants could not get through. They pressed against each other, like a mob heaving on a door that would not yield.
Mungo knew that only a shot to the head or neck stood any chance of making a kill. But at the moment, all he could see were the beasts’ hindquarters, packed tightly together in a grey wall. He edged sideways, trying to get around their flanks.
The elephants were still failing to break down the barrier of trees. It surely could not hold much longer. Mungo could already hear branches begin to snap. At the front of the phalanx, one of the elephants grabbed a bough with his trunk and ripped it away. The movement turned his head sideways, so for a moment it was exposed.
A deafening blast shook the clearing. From the corner of his eye, Mungo saw Tippoo, spinning back and dumped on his backside, the Goliath gun smoking in his hands. The elephant Mungo had seen bellowed in agony as a half-pound ball of lead smashed into his shoulder.
The sound, and the smell of blood, drove the herd to a new pitch of terror. The trees gave way; the path opened. The elephants stampeded away. In the tumult, Mungo could not see what had happened to the animal Tippoo had shot.
But one beast did not run away. At the back of the group stood a big bull elephant that dwarfed every other animal in the herd. His ears were ragged; his mighty tusks were as thick as anchor cables, and scarred by uncounted years of fighting. He had never lost a battle. Now he turned and saw Mungo – an impudent ape – standing before him.
He charged.
Mungo stood alone. Tippoo lay on the ground, clutching his shoulder – only a few yards away, but it might as well have been miles. The big gun was empty, he had no time to reload, and against the mighty bull elephant even a man like Tippoo was no better than an insect. Nor could Mungo run. The elephant would overtake him in seconds. Either he would be gored on the end of those mighty tusks, or trampled under the huge pounding feet.
So Mungo stood his ground. It was the hardest thing he had ever done – keeping firm in the face of six tons of elephant bearing down on him – but he knew it was his only hope. The animal put back its ears and lowered its head, so that its tusks almost grazed the ground. A haze of dust surrounded it as it drove forward. Fifty feet away.
Mungo raised the gun. Without rifling, it could not be accurate over any great range in the best of circumstances. Against a moving target, with the whole world shaking around him, he would have to wait until he could be absolutely certain.
Now the elephant was thirty feet away and gaining speed. A calm overtook Mungo. Though the ground trembled under his feet, the arms that held the gun did not waver. The cards had been dealt and could not be changed. Either he or the elephant would die. At least if it was him, he might see Camilla again.
Twenty feet away. So close, Mungo could taste the dust of its charge on his tongue. He drew a breath and held it, just as he had hunting deer at Windemere. He sighted the gun on the old bull’s lowered head, in a little swelling in the centre of the forehead. He fired.
It was a shot born of desperation – and ignorance. If Mungo had known more about hunting elephants, he would never even have tried it. In the course of his life to come he would bag hundreds of the beasts, but never again with a direct shot to the front of the head. Later, with more experience and when he had seen the thick bone of an elephant skull, he would know that the odds were a million to one against.
But – this time – they fell in his favour. The shot wo
rked. The bullet struck home, and the elephant collapsed so suddenly Mungo did not even have to move out of its way. It lay on the ground, a few feet away, unmoving. A trickle of blood ran out from the hole in its forehead, which looked far too small to have taken the life of such a great beast.
A wave of exhilaration swept through Mungo and left him giddy. He had cheated death; he had secured the first down payment on his revenge. In the morning he would be in agony from the thorns, but for now the thrill of the hunt and success flooded his veins and muted the pain. He scrambled up the dead beast’s flanks to stand on its mighty shoulder, tipped back his head and howled a scream of victory to the darkening sky.
Down in the clearing, Tippoo had lifted himself off the ground. His face was a mask of astonishment. By now, more of the Raven’s crew had managed to find their way in, cutting through the jungle and following the sound of the guns. They stared at Mungo with almost superstitious awe, as if looking at a god. His clothes had been cut to such ribbons he was virtually naked. Almost every inch of his long body was smeared with blood – either his own, or the elephant’s. Yet he was invincible.
‘There must be near to five hundred pounds of ivory in those tusks,’ he exulted.
‘And more,’ said Tippoo.
He gestured to the gap in the jungle that the elephants had battered down. Most of the herd had escaped, but the animal he had hit with the Goliath had not gone far. She lay dead, a little way down the path. Two more tusks.
‘Then let us get to work.’
In the months that followed, the barrels of their guns were rarely allowed to cool. The Raven’s crew became adept hunters, finding the elephant spoor and tracking it, sometimes for days at a time. They learned how to position themselves against the wind so that the elephants would not smell them; how to find the spot behind the shoulder, about two thirds down the body, where a single bullet could get the kill. They dug pits, and filled them with sharp stakes to trap the elephants; they made hides from where Tippoo could use his great gun to blast through the elephants’ chests into their vital organs. Most of all, they learned how to strip the ivory from the skull without breaking it, extracting each tooth intact to be added to the store of their plunder.