Come on! Farandoul said to himself. Things have been going too well since yesterday, now the difficulties are reappearing! Shall we have dinner this evening? That’s beginning to seem problematic.
They sailed all day without making much progress amid the meanders of the N’kari. In the evening, numerous rhinoceroses were encountered on the banks, and when they wanted to disembark, Niam-Niam, in too much of a hurry to leap ashore, was nearly carried off by a huge lion lying in ambush in the reeds. The boat put out into open water again. Farandoul decided to go on further, in the hope of finding some islet on which to spend the night.
“What about dinner?” asked the ladies, whose appetites were sharpened by the fresh air of the river. “It’s time.”
“Undoubtedly,” Farandoul replied, trying to laugh, “but it’s the game that isn’t coming—or rather, it’s too large for us.”
Everyone seemed rather irritated; only the hippopotamus, having had its ration of bundles of reeds, manifested no discontent. Blissfully asleep, it let itself drift through the water, perhaps dreaming….
“This is too stupid!” Farandoul suddenly cried, at 10 p.m. We definitely need dinner. Come on, Niam-Niam—stop!”
And while the hippopotamus obeyed its guide and set foot on the river-bed a few meters from the bank, Farandoul took a certain bristly costume from his luggage, improvised on his instructions by a skilful Parisian armorer. It consisted of a sealed jacket made of thick leather, provided with a complete set of steel spikes, and a number of leather strips, similarly sewn with steel spikes, designed to protect the arms and legs. Farandoul, thus clad, resembled a pin-cushion, but he was absolutely invulnerable and could defy the fangs or claws of a lion.
“I’m going hunting for our dinner,” he said. “A little more patience!”
Prudently, he forbade his companions to leave the boat, and lit a few fires on the bank as soon as he came ashore, for greater security. That done. he plunged into the undergrowth in search of some sort of game, with a sparkle in his eye and his carbine in his hand.
Alas, after half an hour of fruitless searching, he was convinced of the absence of all small game. Only the large animals were abundant. Roaming lions, as hungry as he was, were seeking to take some young and inexperienced rhinoceros by surprise.
Famished! Famished! Farandoul said to himself, furiously. Well, we shall see! We’ll eat anyway, damn it!
Setting his carbine down next to him, not intending to make use of it unless it was absolutely necessary, he unsheathed his Makalolo sword—a sturdy weapon—set his back against a tree with one knee on the ground, and waited for the lions, bait and hunter at the same time.
He did not have long to wait. For half an hour, two lions had been following him without daring to attack; seeing him motionless under a tree, they gathered heir courage and crept forward to within six paces of him. Farandoul did not turn a hair. He would have been able to kill one with a rifle shot, but he wanted to save his ammunition. The lions, meanwhile, furiously flicked their sides with their long tails; finally, carried away by their appetite, the younger made up its mind and pounced, with a ferocious roar.
Farandoul received it on his sword; both of them rolled on the ground. The grievously wounded lion bit Farandoul’s shoulder furiously, but embedded the steel spikes in its open mouth. A second sword-thrust finished it off.
Meanwhile, the second lion, which had drawn nearer in order to have its share, fled howling on three feet, with a steel spike in its flesh.
Our hero lost no time in artfully cutting a few choice morsels from the dead animal’s rump. A quarter of an hour later, to everyone’s great delight, these morsels were roasting in front of the boat.
“The taste’s agreeable, but it’s very tough!” That was the opinion of the fugitive queens. Even so, they finished off these extraordinary and savage beefsteaks, and they slept all the more peacefully for it, in spite of the frightful concert given by the ferocious beasts that bounded along the bank all night like a menagerie in revolt.
Morning came; it was the sixth day of the flight. Farandoul pressed the boat to try to get past the curls of the N’kari; they only had enough lion for breakfast, but for the evening meal Farandoul counted on repeating the previous day’s hunt, if small game were still lacking.
The N’kari continued to turn and turn again; they sailed on without making much headway, and game continued to be conspicuous by its absence. At 8 p.m., Farandoul put on his costume again and went out hunting, after having tied up the hippopotamus safely.
That evening, lions too were rare. Farandoul only saw a single one limping on three paws, which fled at top speed, with its tail lowered, as soon as it saw the hunter. It was the one from the previous evening. Just as Farandoul, despairing of his cause, was about to send a rifle-bullet after it, he found himself face to face with a rhinoceros. That animal, exhaling raucous snorts, advanced to block his path entirely. Farandoul took three steps back and armed his rifle. Suddenly, though, there was no ground beneath his feet. He released a cry and disappeared over a sort of precipice.
The fall was broken by branches that he dragged down with him, with the result that he found himself almost safe and sound, after a drop of more than ten meters. As he got back to his feet and tried to take account of his situation, a frightful noise resounded above his head. He recoiled, masses of earth and branches collapsing upon him, as the rhinoceros fell into the ditch in its turn.
As you will have suspected, this pit was one of those that negroes dig in places frequented by ferocious beasts, particularly near the banks of rivers, where they come to drink every evening. In the center stood a sharpened tree-trunk, solidly embedded in the ground and designed to skewer any animal falling into the pit.
When Farandoul, briefly blinded by the earth dislodged with the branches, was able to open his eyes, he perceived his enemy the rhinoceros in a parlous situation. It had fallen directly on top of the pointed stake. Perforated all the way through, it was lying there nailed to the ground, like a beetle pinned in some collection. At the sight of Farandoul, it let out howls of rage, and set itself back on its feet. It tried to hurl itself upon him, but it was solidly nailed down, and all it could do was rotate around the perforating pole.
As the pit was not large, Farandoul had to move in a circle too, to keep out of the way of the animal’s terrible horn. Gradually, instead of weakening, the rhinoceros seemed to acquire new vigor at the sight of the ungraspable enemy that circled in front of it and always escaped it, and it began to rotate more furiously.
The situation became critical. The rhinoceros, drunk with fury, turned with ever-increasing speed, and his own circular course began to tire Farandoul out. Another minute and they would make contact! A supreme leap permitted him to reach the maddened animal’s tail; he clung to it and let it draw him on in a vertiginous whirl. He was saved! The blind rhinoceros was still turning, but Farandoul, attached to its tail, inevitably followed its movements.
That infernal pursuit lasted half an hour, then suddenly ceased. The rhinoceros collapsed in a heap. It was dead! Farandoul, dazed and out of breath, also fell down, but he soon got up triumphantly. The enormous beast impaled on the tree would furnish him with a means of getting out of the trap. Farandoul climbed on top of it, but before jumping up to the rim of the pit he sat down on the beast to rest for a few minutes.
The sky was clear, and the moonlight plunging into the pit through the gaping opening illuminated the walls, the tree-trunk and the rhinoceros’s back. Farandoul looked around mechanically; suddenly, he released a cry of surprise. The rhinoceros had something written on it! On the beast’s hairy and creased hide, characters carved out as in the bark of a tree had just appeared to our friend, and the first word that he read was…
FARANDOUL
He bent down excitedly; it really was his name that was there. What did it mean? A few half-erased lines were distinguishable beneath it. Farandoul set about deciphering them. This is what he read:
&
nbsp; FARANDOUL
No…cannot be eaten…
MANDIBUL and his friends set out…to search…
we are at…traveling towards…
this rhino…will perhaps reach him!
It was Mandibul’s handwriting that the rhinoceros bore on its back.
Our hero was moved. So the devoted Mandibul had set out with the sailors to search for their captain, lost in the African wilderness! But where were they? In what direction must one go to find them? There was no answer to that, the significant indications having disappeared; doubtless the rhinoceros, irritated by an itch, had rubbed itself against rocks or trees.
There was nothing to do but continue the descent of the N’kari; perhaps the Providence that had delivered the rhinoceros to his address would complete its work and reunite Farandoul and Mandibul.
Farandoul was about to cut off a large slice of his ex-enemy the rhinoceros in order to take it to the four hungry queens, who must be awaiting him impatiently, when a slight noise in the pit made him prick up his ears.
Ah! he said to himself. There’s something else in this pit—so much the better if it’s something good to eat; it can replace the tough and indigestible rhinoceros…
Knife in hand, he leapt down from the beast’s back. The slight noise had seemed to come from a corner of the pit buried in brushwood; as Farandoul’s approach the noise was repeated, but nothing emerged from the heap of branches.
“Come on, then!” cried Farandoul, growing impatient and giving the brushwood a forceful kick. “Come on, I’m hungry!”
A scream replied to him—a human scream full of both joy and fear. A man, whose clothes were in rags, leapt out of his hiding place and tried to fling his arms around Farandoul’s neck.
A blow from our hero’s fist saved the other’s life, for he was about to be transpierced by the spikes of the famous lion-hunting costume. He took two steps back and let himself fall, limply, right on top of the rhinoceros’s horn. Again it was Farandoul’s arm that snatched him out of harm’s way.
Our hero set him back on his feet and stood in front of him. “Let’s see,” she said. “Calm down, and don’t make a fuss. Who are you and what are you doing in this pit?”
“Oof!” exclaimed the other, mopping his forehead. “I’m in the pit because I fell into it this afternoon. You gave me quite a fright when you fell into it yourself with the rhinoceros. I took you for two ferocious beasts fighting to determine which would devour the other and I made myself as small as possible in my corner. That’s it! As for my titles, I am Jules Désolant Barbezohe, naturalist, sent by the Société de Géographie to search for the celebrate traveler Saturnin Farandoul. The last news we received was that he was eaten by the Niam-Niams, but we still conserved some hope. Today, alas, I think that nothing remains to us but to mourn the…”
“Don’t mourn, my dear Désolant—I’m Farandoul, still intact!”
The envoy of the Société stepped back again. “But…the last information…still, since you say so, I have to believe you. So I’ve found Farandoul! What glory for me! If only I could send a dispatch to the Société de Géographie—but I’m alone, the negroes of my escort having abandoned me to go home with my money, my provisions and my luggage!”
IV.
When Farandoul and Désolant emerged from the pit, after having cut off a large quarter of rhinoceros, the Moon was reaching the end of its course and giving way to the dawn. The two men headed for the N’kari at a rapid gymnastic trot.
Farandoul was in a hurry to get the produce of his hunt back to the queens. The poor women, tortured by hunger and anxiety, must have spent a very bad night. At least, since the hour for supper was long gone, they would be able to have breakfast with no further delay.
After a ten-minute run they arrived at the N’kari. The hippopotamus-boat was still at anchor, but Farandoul did not recognize the mooring-place at first. Still running, he leapt into the waves of the N’kari and reached the vessel, whose silence was troubling: not a single word to celebrate his return, not a single cry of joy after that long night of waiting!
The reason for that silence quickly became obvious. Farandoul lifted up a corner of the tent pitched on the hippopotamus’s back and released an exclamation. The tent was empty; there was no one aboard.
Farandoul leapt back ashore to explore the surroundings. His attention was attracted by the peculiar state of the terrain, which had already struck him ten minutes earlier. The hippopotamus had not budged; it was certainly where it had been solidly anchored the evening before, but the bank had changed its appearance. The long grass seemed to have been mown, the reeds cut down, the bushes stripped away. Only the soil remained, black and bare.
What had happened? Farandoul and Désolant, leaning over the ground, searched vainly for some clue.
Finally, our hero slapped his forehead; he had figured it out. “Ants!” he said to Désolant. “It’s an invasion of black ants that must have put the bank into the state in which we see it. A colony of those terrible insects, as large as house-flies and as voracious as tigers, migrating in search of new lodgings and interrupted by the river, must have followed the bank, devouring everything in its passage. The devastation extends over a width of more than 20 meters; the ants, marching in dense ranks, must form a veritable army. But what has happened? Why did the queens abandon the hippopotamus, a safe retreat? Why? Ah! Doubtless, gripped by hunger, the warrior women wanted to catch their supper. They must have taken up their bows and arrows and come ashore—but what then? Perhaps they encountered the army of ants and were devoured!”
The anguished Farandoul was about to set off in search of the unfortunate women when a small tree-branch fell nearby. He raised his head mechanically, and joyfully perceived Niam-Niam, some distance away in the lower branches of a baobab. The boy was making mysterious signs to him.
“Why, what are you doing there?” cried our hero, racing to the baobab. “Where are the queens?”
“Softly, Master, softly!” replied Niam-Niam, just as mysteriously. “The queens are here, in the tree.”
Farandoul’s heart, relieved of a great weight, skipped a beat. “Bring them down, then,” he said. “I’ve brought food.”
“The queens cannot, Master. The gorillas do not want to let them go.”
Farandoul went pale. The envoy of the Société de Géographie cocked his rifle.
“Yes, Master. Last evening, after you left and did not come back, the queens wanted to hunt. We came to land, but found nothing. As we tried to return to the boat, the ants passed by. The ants were hungry, and wanted to eat us. We jumped into the baobab and climbed to the top. No more black ants, but in the baobab a family of gorillas, big, strong and nasty, have taken the queens and are keeping them up there. Me stayed down below to warn Master!”
Niam-Niam was telling the truth, for another branch fell from the top of the tree, carrying a piece of paper on which one of the white queens had scribbled:
Dear Farandoul,
Horrible situation! Never would I have believed it when I used to stroll in the Jardin des Plantes. Having barely escaped from the ants, we have fallen into the hands of monkeys! We are prisoners; hideous gorillas are keeping us in sight! Exhausted by fatigue, thinking ourselves safe in the tree, we had installed ourselves in the branches in order to try to sleep while Niam-Niam was on watch, when we suddenly woke up with a start. Gigantic creatures had seized us around the waist and carried into the upper reaches of the baobab, careless our screams.
Their lodgings are up here: a sort of cabin formed out of interlaced branches. There are a dozen, counting the little ones. They have deposited us here, and are now content to watch us, rather respectfully. What can we do?
Thus far, we have had no grounds for complaint; we have found figs and coconuts in sufficient quantity, but when we make as if to descend they growl furiously and force us to sit down again.
How can we get out of this?
Caroline.
What a situation,
indeed! The four unfortunate queens in the power of gorillas! Farandoul remembered often having heard stories told, since his arrival in Africa, of women kidnapped by these wild men of the woods and never seen again! But Farandoul was a born fighter, and, without losing heart, he racked his brains in search of an expedient. Attacking the mighty gorillas was impracticable, those monsters of the simian race being endowed with fearful strength. Only trickery remained.
Ah, Farandoul said to himself, if only we were in Oceania! I was a monkey for 12 years, I knew how to make myself understood—but here, in Africa…bah! Who knows whether, perhaps…yes, it’s the only way!
And he communicated his plan to Désolant—who, apparently, could not have been more surprised by it. Even so, Farandoul’s tone soon persuaded him, and he promised to follow his savior’s instructions to the letter. Niam-Niam and Désolant installed themselves in the branches of a neighboring baobab, while Farandoul, by contrast, climbed up into the gorillas’ tree.
Farandoul paused half way; he had heard hoarse and ill-tempered grunts in the heights; seemingly unintimidated, our hero set about swinging frenetically on his branch, as he had learned to do long ago, and uttered bizarre cries that startled the ears of Niam-Niam and Désolant.
The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul Page 31