I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  We all chattered with a sort of brittle gaiety now, and glued our eyes on the gas gauge. The needle and the “zero” line soon met. I saw a mountain shaped like a face with the mouth wide open and had visions of dropping into it. The gauge by now indicated empty—completely empty.

  Then Boris spoke—for the first time, I think.

  “I’ve been doing some figuring,” he said, “and according to my calculations we have just about enough gas in the pipes and carburetor to last us four minutes.”

  Our eyes flew to the clock. Martin reached across and gripped my hand.

  “Whatever happens, Osa—I sort of feel that you’ll be all right for a long time yet.” He looked at the clock. Two minutes had gone. “You know what the English always say—we’ve heard them thousands of times here in Africa—”

  “You mean—‘carry on’?” I heard myself saying.

  “That’s right.”

  He looked at the clock and just sat there. The boys in the seats behind hadn’t said a word. The four minutes had passed. It was going on to five. Any minute now, I thought, we’d hear the sputter of the dying motor.

  The thought made me angry. Martin and his work—our bright shining plane—fifty thousand dollars’ worth of cameras and specially ground lenses stowed in the tail—

  Boris zoomed for altitude to give me a better range with the binoculars, hoping that we might see Mpika in the dim distance.

  “A lake,” I cried, as I spotted a blue dot in the forest below. “I know it’s a lake.” I prayed fervently.

  All were incredulous, then Boris shouted, “I think she’s right,” and headed for the spot. A lake it was, but perhaps six or seven miles distant.

  Boris set the amphibian down in a beautiful landing on the tiny lake’s smooth surface. Examination showed that there was just enough gasoline for fifteen more seconds of flying time.

  To my astonishment, I saw that this was no lake in a jungle swamp; it was a private lake, with smooth banks and beyond that a wide stretch of close-cropped lawn, and beyond that, a house. Not a house, a mansion!

  Recovering from the shock and surprise, I found that we were being greeted by Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Stewart Gore-Brown. They took quite as a matter of fact our descending upon them so unceremoniously and offered us the hospitality of their lovely home. Having retired from the British army, the colonel found this Elysian spot and had literally hewn an estate out of the jungle, even making the bricks of the buildings from the native clay. Their magnificent coffee plantation was one of the finest in Africa.

  We were anxious about Vern, however, and our first concern was to get some gasoline from somewhere and push on to Mpika, wherever it was.

  These heavenly people—and I shall always think of them as such—not only knew exactly where Mpika was but also supplied us with the gas to get there. We had overshot the place, apparently, in our swift plane.

  Vern, we found to our great relief, had arrived hours before in good shape.

  * * *

  —

  In Kenya Colony, a hundred and seventy-five miles or so south of the Abyssinian border, there lies a valley which separates the rugged Mathews Range from the equally rugged Ndoto Range.

  Difficult to reach by ground, nevertheless we had managed to make our way through to this mountain-enclosed plain while at Lake Paradise. We felt that in a concentrated area, reasonably sheltered from winds and teeming with game, we could make some very interesting studies from the air, and decided on Ngornit, a desolate native village which actually was very little more than a name, as our base camp. Sanial and Moreno took fifty blacks and went on ahead to clear the shrubs and level the ground for a landing field.

  While these preparations were being made at Ngornit, Martin had much to occupy him at Nairobi. There was a hangar to be built at the Nairobi landing field; there were lenses and cameras to be cleaned, adjusted, and tested; and there was sound equipment to be assembled. My time was full, of course, with the purely housewifely duties of airing our long-closed Nairobi home, and also with purchasing and packing supplies for our air safari.

  Two months after our planes were first set down in Nairobi, the Ark was lifted off the ground by Vern and headed for Ngornit. Three hours and twenty minutes later we circled the big white cross which Sanial and Moreno had had outlined on the ground of our wilderness airfield. A “sock” gave us our wind direction and, as usual, Vern made a perfect landing.

  Martin and I never did get over our astonishment at the freedom which our planes in Africa gave us. We called them our “seven-league boots.” Mountains, jungle, plain were a vast panorama beneath us; great elephant migrations, herds of thousands, also great flocks of white herons and countless giraffe and plains game were spotted one moment from the air, and the next moment were being recorded by our cameras. We were able to land in ordinarily inaccessible places where white people had never been, and here saw natives of strange, remote tribes.

  And Lake Paradise—loved by us, I think, above any place on earth—we saw cradled in its mountain lap, a sanctuary for the animals for hundreds of miles around, a sanctuary for our memories.

  The south tip of Lake Rudolf was only an hour by air from our camp at Ngornit, and we set out early one morning, with Vern at the controls, to learn more of this curious and desolate body of salt water. One hundred and eighty-seven miles long, extending deep into the Abyssinian border, its shores are as barren and pocked as the craters of the moon, and from the look of the few stunted trees we saw, it is swept by hot, fierce, unending winds.

  Fifty miles from the southern end of Lake Rudolf there is an island inhabited by natives known somewhat vaguely as the Elmolos, natives who, according to legend, believe themselves to be the only people in existence, and their island, set in apparently limitless stretches of water, to be the entire world.

  In an hour and a half from Ngornit we were flying over this tiny speck in the rough, salty lake. Vern circled several times, then shook his head.

  “Can’t land,” he said. “Too rough.”

  My husband wasn’t to be convinced until he had looked through the binoculars and seen the breakers on the beach. Reluctantly he admitted that it was a little rough, and he had to content himself with taking photographs from the air.

  I think we must have flown to Rudolf from Ngornit a dozen times, hoping to descend in the waters near the little island, but Vern refused to take the risk in a sea which, apparently, was always rough.

  We flew on north over the lake for perhaps seventy-five miles and came to what on our map was indicated as Center Island. Perhaps ten times the size of the island inhabited by the Elmolos, we saw, as we flew over, that it was uninhabited and had three little lakes on it, all in the craters of extinct volcanos.

  Vern circled, eased gently onto the water on the lee side, and taxied to a stretch of sandy beach. Shouldering our cameras and guns, we climbed over bare, volcanic rocks to the shore of one of the stagnant little lakes. Herons by the hundreds waded sedately among the water plants near the banks and flew noisily overhead, and crocodiles, more than we had ever seen—sometimes three deep—lined the shores.

  We took pictures of everything. A little tired, after a bit, my husband sat on a jutting rock, swung his foot, and said that we might come here to live sometime. I blazed indignantly and said I thought the place was horrid. Nothing grew on it; there was even something wrong with the sun, the way it looked, all white and bald. And the heat, with the funny, dry bite that it had—and the wind! Why, the wind alone would be enough to drive me crazy, I said.

  Just then I saw a puff adder under the rock within an inch of his swinging foot. At the same instant Vern came running and yelled, “Come on! The wind!” We ran, and forgot about the puff adder.

  Hauling, pushing, struggling, we turned the plane about against the wind and, soaked with salt water, climbed in. The waves were running frighteningly high
, but Vern, cool as always, started the motors. Our ship stood on its tail one moment and crashed on a wave the next. Slowly Vern opened the throttle; faster and faster we hit the waves until they were like trip-hammers pounding us to pieces.

  Then the pounding stopped. We were in the air.

  Something about that horrid lake seemed to fascinate Martin. Another day we landed in a quiet cove on the mainland. I opened the hatch and looked out at the bleak shore.

  It was just about as desolate a place as one could find in the world. Only an occasional tuft of dried, wiry grass broke the nothingness of the place. The scenery had all the qualities of a surrealist painting.

  Martin, I saw then, was looking intently off. Twenty curious-looking naked natives were peering at us over a slight rise above the beach. Presently, showing no fear and very little curiosity, they came down to us. They paid no attention whatever to our plane but seemed to find us very amusing; our white faces and hands in particular, though our clothes, too, seemed to strike them as being pretty silly.

  Our native interpreter said they seemed to be of the Turkana tribe, and Martin and I concluded that as a result of some tribal battle, probably, they had wandered many generations before to this dismal place.

  We had seen other Turkanas, but none quite as fantastic as these. Their long, kinky hair was plastered with mud and tallow and molded into the most ingenious forms. Bulk and height seemed very important in this peculiar type of ornamentation, and we learned that the dead, just before they were buried, were shorn of their hair that it might be added to that of surviving relatives. Additional mud and tallow were required, of course, to make the dead man’s hair stick, and the shaping and molding that followed brought about coiffures of such bizarre design and abstract quality as would delight a sculptor of the modern school.

  Other uncomfortable ornaments worn by this strange tribe of Turkanas were disks of wood the size of a man’s hand, hanging from holes in their noses. And as if this weren’t enough, plugs of ivory or wood were thrust through their lower lips. An intriguing feature of this plug was that a little clever manipulation with the tongue could give it quite an animated look. It could be pushed out, pulled in, or wiggled.

  We opened a saltine tin for lunch, and I handed it to one of the men to pack away. But the natives had spied it. The food did not, apparently, interest them, but that shiny piece of tin—to my astonishment, I soon beheld the most of it dangling like a new jewel from the nose of a strutting dandy.

  What little we could see of the skin of these people appeared to be a good, healthy brown, but the daubings of mud and alkali which had been applied gave it a very unhealthy look.

  My husband thought these people were marvelous and declared enthusiastically that we would remain right where we were for a few days.

  Vern took the plane up in the air so he could land on the hard-packed sand of the beach. Martin and I watched the natives closely to see what their reaction would be to the big ship as it went into the air. To our complete astonishment, there was no reaction whatever. They were equally unimpressed when the plane roared to a landing within a short distance of where we stood. The only thing that interested them was the broad shade spread by the wings. Running under it, they decided it was wonderful and almost fought one another for a place in it.

  We had no trouble at all persuading several of these blacks to get into the plane. Martin, Vern, and I were all set, however, for some excitement when the ship lifted into the sky. There was none whatever.

  A small village appeared below us perhaps half a mile from the shore. A few cattle, poor things, stood in the blazing sun. Martin asked our native interpreter to point out a cow to one of our passengers.

  “That is not a cow,” our Turkana passenger said emphatically and in some surprise. “A cow has legs.”

  We saw his point after a few minutes. He could not, of course, see the cow’s legs from the air.

  Our interpreter next pointed out a tree.

  Again the Turkana shook his head; his mind was made up by this time that we were very stupid people.

  “That,” he said, “is not a tree. You look up to see a tree, and you can walk under a tree. That is not a tree.”

  Chapter 30

  We had moved our camp three hundred miles from Ngornit, when a runner brought word from Trubee Davison, president of the American Museum of Natural History, that he, his wife, Dorothy, and Pete Quesada, a U.S. Army pilot, were on their way to Nairobi. Would we, the message went on, help them collect four elephants to complete a museum group started by Carl Akeley some years before?

  I doubt that we’ve ever broken camp more quickly or with greater eagerness.

  Upon the Davisons’ arrival we made a survey and selected the Tana River as the best place at the moment in which to secure the elephants.

  This was Mr. Davison’s first visit to Africa; he wanted a more intimate view of the country than could be had by plane, so he went with the caravan of trucks. This caravan carried the supplies and hunting equipment, as well as seventy-five porters. Ten skinners also were added to the expedition to take care of the pelts.

  Giving the trucks several days to reach the little government post of Garissa, the rest of us followed by plane. Pete Quesada flew the smaller of our two planes, the Spirit of Africa, with Dot Davison and a native cook as passengers, and Vern piloted Osa’s Ark, carrying Martin and me, together with our heavy load of camera and sound equipment.

  The selection of the Tana River proved to be excellent. It seemed to us that elephants were moving everywhere, and we were all confident that we’d have the four specimens to complete the museum group in no time at all.

  The Akeley museum group already had a large bull, together with a lesser bull, a cow, and a baby. The museum wanted to enlarge the group to a small herd, still keeping the big bull dominant. What really was needed was a collection of fine specimens just a trifle under full growth.

  Every morning for days we were up early and on the trail until dusk, searching for the right specimens, but without success. Studying a distant herd through his binoculars one day, Trube exclaimed delightedly that our luck had changed; there was at least one of the lot that seemed the exact size needed.

  We had followed the herd for more than two hours when our trackers came back and reported that the beasts had turned around and were headed toward us. Excitedly we agreed that the first kill should be Dot’s.

  We waited, and I was proud to see how cool Dot was as the herd approached. Presently she took careful aim—I had told her about the little place in the forehead the size of a dollar she must try to hit—and fired.

  At first the fine animal seemed only wounded and gathered himself for a charge. She fired again, and the elephant fell where he stood. The rest of the herd stampeded.

  My husband, whose first interest was always his camera, decided he must now have some more aerial shots of the various fine elephant herds in the district. I went with him and we had rare luck with light, groupings, and the closeness with which we were able to swoop down over the big animals and photograph them.

  Trubee and Dot’s experience that day, however, was the one that took the spotlight when we gathered around the campfire that night. Trubee, it seems, had taken on a charge. Dot was using an Eyemo camera. As the big pachyderm charged head-on, Trubee made a crack shot with his elephant gun; the recoil threw him off balance, he fell against Dot, and the pair went down in a heap. Elephant, gunner, and cameraman—all flat—was something new in elephant hunting.

  Within another week, Trubee and his party had secured the four nearly grown specimens required, but we couldn’t let them go back to the States without introducing them to Carl Akeley’s Tanganyika lion country. Sending our men on ahead several weeks in advance to make camp, we flew in the Ark from Nairobi—Dot, Trubee, Martin, and I—with Vern at the controls.

  Flying low over some of our old hunting
and camping grounds on the Serengeti Plains, we saw every species of animal in unbelievable numbers.

  We were curious, of course, to learn what some of our old lion friends would think of the plane, and the next day after we were settled in camp, we had Vern taxi the Ark up to the edge of a bushy donga.

  I remained in the plane; Martin set up his cameras and sound equipment at an advantageous spot; our men dragged some freshly killed bait around the place, then tied it with a thirty-foot rope to the camera-car.

  The lions soon appeared. One of them I recognized, from a previous safari, as our magnificent friend with the beautiful mane and kingly air. They indulged in the usual cat pranks of tugging at the bait and jumping and riding with it and were quite unconcerned when their dinner was hauled to within twenty feet of the plane and left there.

  Our regal friend looked the ship over in a critical but rather disdainful fashion, then carried a piece of meat to the shade of one of the wings and sat down to enjoy it. I noticed that he was a trifle past his prime now, and that a few gray hairs sprinkled his muzzle.

  Several of the other lions wandered about the plane, only mildly curious; then I noticed a big, sleek, taffy-maned fellow approaching from the donga. Switching his tail, he stalked about the ship and kept up a continuous growling.

  Opening the hatch, I talked to him, telling him to be quiet. I was perhaps head and shoulders out of the plane at the time. Looking off toward my husband, I waved my hand. A contortion of alarm crossed his face, which was my warning. Dropping down, I slammed the hatch shut over my head and in the same instant the lion crashed heavily against the safety glass.

  This annoyed me. It seemed entirely uncalled for, and picking up the first thing that came to hand, I opened the hatch carefully and threw it with all my might. It happened to be a package of pancake flour and burst in a most satisfactory white cloud on the lion’s nose. Instantly his head and mane had the look of a powdered wig. Bewildered and enraged, he stalked off.