I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  Martin’s roar of laughter stopped me and I retraced my steps, feeling very silly. He was still laughing.

  “What would you have done if you’d caught them?” he asked.

  “That part doesn’t matter,” I answered with as much dignity as possible. “I had to show them they couldn’t bluff me.”

  We stayed three months at Lake Paradise, and Martin planned our short expeditions so methodically while there that when we left for Nairobi and the States we had a thorough working knowledge of the surrounding country. Hard-packed elephant trails, apparently centuries old, crisscrossed the great virgin forest with the orderliness and purpose of as many city streets. Exploring them, we found they led straight and clean to the lake, to feeding grounds, to desert, to plain, and to water holes, and that animal traffic increased or lessened according to season. Cool, rainy weather saw the four-footed travelers heading for desert and plain; hot, dry weather found them returning to forest and lake.

  “Palm Springs in the winter, Lake Saranac in the summer,” Martin said flippantly. It always pleased him to find similarities in human and animal conduct. “People think they’re so smart!” was a favorite and telling dig.

  When we assembled our safari for the return trip to Nairobi, our money was practically gone, we were at the end of our film supply, and nerves and muscles were weary, but during the three months at the uncharted lake Martin had conceived a plan that both delighted and staggered me.

  “Won’t it take an awful lot of money?” I asked cautiously.

  “Of course it will, but we’ll pay it back the way we’ve always done, out of the pictures we make.”

  My husband’s plan was to spend at least four unbroken years at Lake Paradise, with enough money and equipment, including the latest and best in cameras, to photograph the family life of all the wild creatures that assembled there. Of first interest, of course, would be the elephant, with as many of his wise and sometimes mysterious habits as we could capture. According to Boculy, there must be many thousands of these prehistoric survivors in this unmolested section of British East Africa.

  With Boculy to guide our safari, the return trip to Nairobi was made with a minimum of effort and strain. The little old man’s sure instinct even led us clear of the sun-baked lava field, and when we reached Meru our porters were very nearly as fresh as when we left Paradise. Here we discharged them, and after deducting their advance and hut tax, we paid each man about ten rupees (five dollars). This was spent promptly, of course, for sugar, rice, unspeakable coffee, and gaudy calico, and the last we saw of our Merus, they were marching happily toward their native hills. Thankfully, we resumed the journey to Nairobi in our cars, with motor lorries and ox carts now carrying our equipment and precious film.

  “Good. Good work,” said Blayney Percival. With the usual restraint of the Britisher, he said little more than this as we ran pictures for him showing the beautiful crater lake which we had named Paradise and the unharassed animals drinking quietly at its shores.

  “But aren’t you excited?” I demanded.

  Mr. Percival permitted himself a little smile. “Frankly,” he said, “I believe I am. As a matter of fact,” he added, “I doubt that even a score of wild horses could keep me from joining you on your next trip.”

  We could very well have gone straight on to the States without stopping in Nairobi to develop the film which we had exposed on our thousand mile journey. Martin had sealed it carefully, and the additional time spent in travel would have affected it not at all, but it was impossible to wait the additional weeks to see what photographic luck we’d had and, more, we wanted to share with Blayney Percival some of the joys of our discovery. After all, the lake, or rather the possibility of its existence, had first been his dream.

  Martin then told Blayney our plan to spend at least four years at the lake when we came back from the States.

  Blayney thought a moment. “Splendid idea, I should say. Take some financing, of course, but what you’ve shown me on the screen here ought to solve that problem. Those animal pictures you took from the blinds at the Shaba hills, your rhino stuff—they’re corking, all of them and, of course, your Lake Paradise pictures are superb.”

  My husband shook his head. “Whatever we realize from this stuff,” he said, “belongs to the people who financed our trip here. Most of it, anyhow.”

  Maybe they’d agree to take the interest and put the principal back in,” I said, feeling quite bright.

  Martin brushed this aside. “Wouldn’t be nearly enough,” he said. Then he went on. “What I did have in mind, though, was showing what we have here, especially the Paradise stuff, to a man like Mr. Eastman of the Kodak Company, for instance.”

  “Mr. Eastman!” I stared at my husband. “Did you say Mr. Eastman?”

  “Yes, George Eastman. I have a feeling that this would interest him.”

  “But, Martin, you don’t know Mr. Eastman.”

  “I’ve never met him, if that’s what you mean.” He eyed me with sudden, almost hostile, challenge. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Why, yes. It seems silly, a man you’ve never even met.”

  “Well, you don’t always have to meet a man to know him, do you?”

  * * *

  —

  The sky was leaden and a cold drizzle slanted against the train window, distorting the landscape. I might as well have been looking at it through tears, and the fact that this was early spring and that the trees wore a fresh green dress did not make the upper New York scene one jot more attractive. Martin sat opposite me in the observation car of the train that we had boarded at Rochester for Manhattan. His lips were pulled in, and he made a great show of reading the morning paper.

  All that trouble for nothing, I thought to myself. Martin’s determination to see Mr. Eastman had taken us to Rochester. We had been admitted to the great executive’s presence, but after a five-minute audience with the slim, tired man, in which we presented everything just about as badly as possible, we found ourselves being politely escorted to the door.

  With utmost courtesy Mr. Eastman had said, “I have seen some of your interesting pictures, Mr. Johnson, and I’ve no doubt but that as you go along your work will be of increasing importance, but unfortunately I have made it an inviolable rule never to invest in private enterprise. Good morning—and thank you very much for coming to see me.”

  In the taxi on the way to the train, and while waiting in the station for the southbound express, Martin and I had spoken to each other only in monosyllables, though I found it very difficult not to point out to him that if one must be so foolish as to build up a big and illogical expectation, one must also expect to take a big and very logical fall. But I managed to keep perfectly still. We rode along for a while, and then the conductor opened the door and said something about Albany being the next stop. He could just as well have said Poughkeepsie for all I cared, but as we were pulling into the station the fact that we were stopping suddenly mattered very much to me. I bounced to my feet.

  “Come on,” I said vigorously to my husband. “We’re getting off.”

  I was off the train before Martin could catch up with me. “What do we want to get off at Albany for?” he demanded crossly. “We don’t know anybody in Albany.”

  “We’re going back to Rochester,” I said.

  “What?”

  “We’re going back to see Mr. Eastman.”

  “But that’s crazy. We can’t do that!”

  “At least the man has a right to know what he’s missing, hasn’t he?” I demanded over my shoulder as I led the way at a fast clip toward the northbound tracks.

  “But we shouldn’t have gone to him in the first place. You were right all along,” he said.

  “Mr. Eastman isn’t going to pass this thing up until he knows what he’s passing up. Why, the way we told it to him, both talking at once, he probably couldn�
�t make head or tail of a thing we said. And besides,” I added, “he’s going to let us show him the pictures of Lake Paradise.”

  “But he told us he didn’t have time to look at any pictures. He said his whole day was tied up!”

  “We’ll wait till he does have time.”

  I pushed Martin aboard the Rochester-bound train, his face puckered and flushed with perplexity. “He’ll think we’re crazy, going back,” he said. “Why—I bet he won’t even let us in!”

  * * *

  —

  “Mr. Eastman will see you now.” The quiet, lovely woman who was Mr. Eastman’s secretary opened the heavy door into the inner office and stood aside for us to enter. Martin looked at me wildly, I squeezed his hand, and once more we were in the big man’s office and the door was closed behind us.

  “Won’t you sit down?” Mr. Eastman said with extreme courtesy—so extreme, in fact, that I had a picture of his patience being all tied up tightly with thin white string.

  I flashed a look at Martin. His nervousness had left him, and he was perfectly composed—the way I’ve seen him when a lion or rhino was charging the camera and he kept on turning the crank.

  “I’m not very good at talking about things that mean a lot to me,” he said, “but I want to get it straight that I didn’t come just to put over a money proposition. I don’t pretend to be that kind of spellbinder.”

  Mr. Eastman nodded slightly.

  “I was so anxious to make it clear that you couldn’t lose by investing in a motion picture to be made of the animals at Lake Paradise that I guess the whole thing had the sound of a money proposition, but what I wanted to do was to interest you in the idea and not in a mere business deal.”

  “Naturally,” I said, putting in my bit, “we know you have plenty of ways of making money without suggestions from us.”

  Mr. Eastman seemed to be trying not to smile. “Am I to understand then,” he said, “that you’re not promising me a super-colossal return on my investment?” I thought to myself that his eyes were like pieces of blue ice with the sun on them.

  Martin shook his head. “I promise only to return your money with a nominal interest for its use. The expense of a four-year safari to this lake—it’s up near the Abyssinian border—will be very large. Only someone who sees the idea and not the returns would consider backing me.”

  “I must say I like your frankness, Mr. Johnson.” Mr. Eastman rose and walked to the window. Martin and I sat very still. We didn’t even look at each other.

  Mr. Eastman turned toward us very suddenly. “I’ll invest ten thousand dollars in your idea,” he said, “and you may use my name freely in securing more.”

  It was still raining when we boarded the train for New York, but I decided that it was a very nice rain, and that this was a very remarkable world.

  “He said he believed in us both,” I said to my husband. “He said that.”

  Martin looked as though he couldn’t stop smiling even if he wanted to. “He also said he likes people who have dreams and the gumption to carry them through. I liked that part too,” he grinned.

  * * *

  —

  “Good-bye! Good-bye!”

  “Well, do you have to let them see you crying?” Martin demanded. “They’ll think I beat you or something.”

  “Nobody’s crying. Who’s crying?” I said crossly. “Good-bye,” I screamed over the side of the ship’s railing to the pier below. “Good-bye!”

  Their faces were blurred, pink discs in the frosty air, and they stood all in a row pushed against the ropes by the crowds behind. Everybody was screaming and throwing confetti. It was December 1, 1923, and once more we were setting sail for Africa. There were my mother and father—his hair a little gray at the temples now. Next to them stood Freda, tall and fair, very like Martin, and at her side, Father Johnson.

  “Plant those Kansas watermelons and let me know how they turn out.” Mr. Johnson’s voice came thinly through his cupped hands.

  I saw my pretty mother reach into her bag for a handkerchief, and I also saw my grandmother poke her brusquely in the ribs, and then poke my father, for good measure. My father was a passenger-train engineer now, an erect, distinguished, kindly looking man, and I felt very proud of him—proud of them all. Suddenly it seemed a little cruel that our work should take us so far away from them, and this time for four years without a single return trip.

  “Good-bye! Good-bye!” we all said senselessly, over and over again.

  I don’t know when my feelings had been as mixed as they were on this sailing, and instead of waiting to watch the New York skyline fade, I ran to our stateroom and indulged in the biggest cry I’d had in years. Martin followed me and sat uncertainly on the edge of a chair. I blew my nose and peered at him through the flowers and baskets of fruit that stood along with our hand luggage piled in the middle of the floor and saw that he was anxious, perplexed, and annoyed, all at the same time.

  “What’s the matter anyhow?” he demanded finally in complete exasperation. “Here everything’s better for us than it’s ever been, and look at you!”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Huh!” said Martin.

  I just sniffed for a while.

  “Lake Paradise and all,” he mumbled to himself. Then he began adding up the many wonderful things that had happened to us since we had been in the States, and my tears seemed very silly indeed.

  “Take Mr. Eastman,” he said. “Why, that man’s our friend, he isn’t just a financial backer. Sent those flowers, didn’t he?” For emphasis, my husband bunted the huge basket of chrysanthemums with the toe of his shoe.

  “Yes, I know,” I said in a small voice. “Everything’s wonderful.”

  “And all the rest of the people that are behind us with their money and their faith—Daniel Pomeroy, George D. Pratt, Mrs. Henry Pomeroy Davison, Trubee and Harry Davison—what more do you want?” My husband almost shouted this last at me.

  “You make it sound as if I didn’t know all those things.”

  My husband went right on, piling up such a weight of masculine logic against my wholly feminine, illogical tears that I should have been crushed with humiliation.

  “And the official sponsorship of the Museum of Natural History, signed by Henry Fairfield Osborn the president, F. Trubee Davison, and all the officers—what could be more wonderful than that, or a greater incentive?”

  “I feel wonderful,” I said.

  “Well, that’s fine,” my husband said with immense relief. He came and sat beside me. “You see,” he said after a while, “I guess I’m sometimes awfully afraid you’re going to get tired of living the way we do among wild people, wild animals—no home. It’s tough on a woman—it must be.”

  He was trying so hard to understand my tears, but since I didn’t understand them myself, it was all pretty confused.

  “And when you cried just now, I began to be afraid all over again that maybe you’d rather have stayed behind with your folks than go with me.”

  “Why, that’s the silliest thing I ever heard,” I said. I was very indignant.

  Tearing down trees to get the tender top-branch leaves.

  Osa covers while Martin photographs huge tuskers at Lake Paradise.

  Young male lions loafing after a feast of zebra.

  Each calf closely followed its formidable mother.

  By tripping a photo-flash wire, this leopard took his own stunning portrait.

  Martin considered this dynamic photograph to be one of his best.

  Flash shot: striped hyena, the rarer of East Africa’s two species.

  Flash shot: black rhinoceros. (Editor’s note: this species is now on the brink of extinction.)

  Martin lounges in a tent in the Belgian Congo.

  Osa
is not exactly lounging as she waits for help.

  Dining room at Lake Paradise. Though of wood and thatched with grass, it supplied the comforts of a New York home. The chairs are made of strips of hide, interlaced.

  Osa’s bedroom at Lake Paradise. Chintz and toiletries from home and even an electric percolator.

  Chapter 22

  It was the afternoon of April 12, 1924, when once more we looked down on Lake Paradise. The sun broke through an overcast sky just as we trudged up the last hundred feet of the incline to the rim, and there it lay, two hundred feet below us in the hollow of the extinct crater, quiet as a pond and with the blue water lilies on its breast. Brilliant butterflies flitted above the lilies. Heron and egrets, ducks and coots, storks and cranes strutted, and animals stood in the clear water up to their bellies, sleepily content with their lot. A lip of pale green marsh-reed edged the lake. Wild olives festooned with Spanish moss grew up the sloping banks. Dark-leaved mahogany trees swept in thick ranks to the crater’s rim, and beyond, magnificent in its vastness, ominous in its reddish-gray nudity, lay the great Dida Galgalla desert stretching clear to the Abyssinian border.

  I stole a look at Blayney Percival, who stood beside us; his eyes were suspiciouly moist. He caught my look and reddened a little.

  “I’m bound to confess,” he said, “that this is rather more astonishing than I had expected it to be.”

  Old Boculy rubbed his ebony pate and looked very proud. Martin pressed my hand tightly and said nothing, but we both knew that this moment was the fulfillment of one dream and the beginning of another.