‘Maybe. We were sleeping in the shed. The camp-fire was outside in the open place. I was half awake. It seemed to me I saw someone take a burning stick from the fire and walk away. I didn’t think much about it A few of the men sometimes get up during the night and get fire to make coffee.’
‘You couldn’t see who it was?’
‘No. The smoke almost hid him. It was more like a black shadow than a man.’
‘How large was - was this thing?’
‘Big.’
‘As big as - Tieg?’
‘Yes. As big as Tieg. Or as big as the gorilla with the bullet in him. You call him Gog. But of course it couldn’t have been the gorilla. He wouldn’t have been that smart.’
Hal was not so sure. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Apes are very imitative. He may have seen one of the men take a brand from the fire. I’m sure he’s been watching the camp, waiting for a chance to get back at us because he thinks we murdered his family. And he must be a pretty angry beast with that bullet wound driving him half crazy with pain. I wish we could catch him and get the bullet out of him. But that fire - there’s one other rascal who might have started it.’
‘You don’t mean one of our own men?’
‘No, no. I mean the man we didn’t see yesterday. But we’ve seen his handiwork - those sixty dead gorillas. Nero can guess that we are going to report him to the commandant. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this morning.’
His words were almost drowned out by the roar of thunder over the volcano. Fork lightning played around the burning mountain. This was no ordinary thunderstorm. Not a drop of rain was falling. The thunder and lightning were caused by the high electric tension produced in the air by the eruption.
Suddenly Hal and Joro were bathed in purple flame. Their bodies gave off sparks. There was a crackling and fizzing noise, as if they were being burned alive. Purple flashes leaped from the tip of Hal’s nose, his ears, his fingers, and toes. Joro put on an equally fine display. Their heads were surrounded by flashing purple crowns. Still neither of them felt any electric shock.
‘Even the god of the volcano is against us,’ Joro said.
Hal laughed. ‘It won’t hurt you. It’s St Elmo’s fire.’
‘What’s that?’
‘An electric discharge caused by the fire between the heat rising from the volcano and the cold air around it. It disturbs all the air within a radius of twenty miles or so of a volcano.’
‘Well,’ Joro said, ‘I hope it scares Tieg or Gog or Nero or anyone else who is sneaking around trying to make trouble.’
Perhaps it did just that, for there was no more sign of an enemy that night. Hal and Roger tried to get back to sleep, but it was not easy to fall asleep while sparkling with purple fire and sizzling like a firecracker. The room was half lit by a purple glow and Snow White’s nervous tongue darted purple flame. Meanwhile the brilliant lightning and terrific blasts of thunder promised rain that never came.
Something was raining down but it was not rain. Breakfast, eaten outside as usual, was liberally sprinkled with falling ashes.
There seemed to be two sunrises, one east, one west. On one side was the rising sun, on the other the blaze of the volcano.
Smoke rose from the forest in a dozen places where cinders had started brush fires. Any one of them might find its way to the camp and finish what the night fire had begun. And this morning there was no fire brigade of elephants to help protect the cabin.
It was a good day to stay at home. So Joro was surprised when Hal said, ‘Leave half of the men here to take care of the camp. We’ll take the others with us.’
‘Where are we going, bwana?’ Joro asked.
‘To Rumangabo, to see the commandant We’ve got to report what Nero is doing to the gorillas.’
‘But Nero must guess that you are going to report him. He and his gang will be waiting for you somewhere along the road.’
‘I know it,’ Hal said. ‘That’s why I want to take along fifteen good men.’
Joro studied the volcano. A river of boiling lava flowed down the east slope. ‘The road that we’ll have to take is right there at the foot of the mountain. Probably it’s already blocked by that flow.’
‘That’s a chance we’ll have to take,’ Hal said. ‘There’s another reason why I want to go right now. There must be animals trapped by the streams of lava. Perhaps we can rescue some of them. Otherwise they’ll be burned alive.’
Chapter 15
The crater
In A Land-Rover and Powerwagon, Hal and Roger with fifteen of their men set out on their dangerous mission.
The dirt road dropped steeply to the village of Kibumba at the foot of Mikeno, then turned left to hug the base of flaming Nyiragongo. Why come so perilously close? There is no network of roads in Africa like those in Europe or America. You go where you must, not where you will. There was no other way to Rumangabo.
They sweated in the heat of the burning mountain. The boiling lava had set fire to the forest. It was a thrilling sight - the blazing mountain two miles high and, spouting from the top of it, another mile of fire carrying up rocks which then fell and tore their way through the burning forest. There was the double thunder, in the sky three miles up and in the volcano itself,
They were so dazzled by the mountain that they failed to watch the road. Suddenly they found themselves crossing a lava river. Fortunately it had cooled a little and turned black. It still sent up great volumes of steam.
Some of the men yelled ‘Stop!’ But Joro, at the wheel of the first car, believed that their only hope was in speed. He could not tell whether the lava was soft or hard. The wheels might sink into it and be glued fast. He would not allow time for that to happen. An instant too long, and the terrific heat that still remained in the lava would blow out the tyres. He shot across as a skater skims over thin ice.
He looked back and was glad to see that the other car was coming just as fast. But there was a third vehicle, a truck full of men, evidently Nero and his gang. The white man himself was at the wheel. His nerve failed him, and he stepped hard on the brake. Perhaps he hoped to stop short of the lava, but the momentum of the heavy truck carried it into the middle of the steaming stream. There it stopped, the wheels sank in, and nothing short of a charge of dynamite would ever tear that truck loose from the clutch of congealing lava.
Hal clapped Joro on the back. ‘Good boy!’ he cried. ‘That will give them time to think things over.’
Joro grinned, but did not accept Hal’s praise. ‘Only trouble is,’ he said, they’ll be there when we come back.’
It was all downhill now to the north end of one of the most beautiful lakes in Africa, Lake Kivu. No wonder they called this the African Riviera. The shore was a carpet of brilliant flowers, and magnificent crested cranes strutted about among the strangest of strange trees, the euphorbia or candelabra, looking like gigantic candle holders thirty feet high.
Now they turned west through the Mitumba Mountains to Rumangabo.
Here they were welcomed by the commandant who had given them their hunting permit.
‘I hope your work is going well,’ he said.
‘A little slowly at first,’ Hal said. ‘But we have a large female gorilla, two small gorillas, and a white python.’
The commandant’s eyebrows went up.
‘A white python? An albino, I presume.’
‘No, a natural white.’
‘Remarkable. I should say you have been very fortunate. I’ve heard of only one other white, and that was killed by natives. Yours will be protected in the zoo. Protection is our greatest problem. That is why we are very careful about issuing permits.’
‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ Hal said. ‘Did you issue a permit to a man named J. J, Nero?’
The commandant looked through his register. ‘No such name here.’
‘Well, the name is here,’ Hal said, passing over the notebook opened at the page bearing the signature, J. J. Nero.
&nb
sp; The commandant thumbed through the notebook, reading the records of animals killed, animals taken, and animals shipped.
‘Why, this fellow’s doing a land-office business. How did you come by this book?’
‘We found it among the dead bodies of sixty adult gorillas that had been slaughtered in order to get their babies’
‘Did you say sixty? You mean six?’
‘I mean sixty. We made a careful count.’
‘That is mass murder. We’ll send out a patrol at once and try to round up Nero and his gang. But we lack men. Therefore I deputize you to help us.’
‘We’ll do what we can,’ Hal assured him. He was about to go out the door when the commandant said.
‘By the way, how about Tieg? I hope he’s not giving you trouble.’ Hal shook his head, but did not answer. ‘You remember,’ added the commandant, ‘I didn’t recommend him.’
‘That’s right, you didn’t,’ Hal said. He wanted to avoid saying anything against poor, blundering, troublesome Tieg. ‘We chose to take him on. So he’s our responsibility.’
Now with power to arrest Nero, if he could find him, Hal took his party back to the flaming mountain.
There was the truck, deep in lava. But Nero and his men had disappeared.
‘Well,’ Hal said, ‘we can’t go hunting for them just now.
We’ve got to see if any animals have been trapped by the eruption.’
They climbed the mountain - through the strange heather trees and twenty-foot tree ferns, the groves of bamboo, the whistling thorn trees, the monarchs of the forest two hundred feet tall trailing tough lianas, the nettles shoulder high bristling with barbs that penetrate heavy clothing and have been known to kill horses, the musanga trees that looked like huge umbrellas.
They must avoid the rivers of lava and the forest fires the lava had started. A small animal escaping from the fire was caught by Roger.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘A bush-baby,’ Hal said. It’s the cousin of the monkeys. Pretty little thing. Makes a good pet’
It was only the size of a small squirrel, had large eyes and ears, soft woolly fur, and a long tail.
They live in the trees,’ Hal said, ‘and like to sleep all day. But this little fellow had no chance today. He’s really like a very tiny kangaroo. He walks on his hind legs and sits up as straight as you do. I hope he appreciates his good luck - meeting you just when he needed you most’
Certainly the little jumper made no attempt to leap from Roger’s hands. Instead he cowered close to the boy’s bush jacket, trembling as his big round eyes gazed at the forest fire and the golden river.
Roger slipped it into a pocket of his jacket. Only its head was in the open. It gradually stopped shaking, then withdrew its head and curled up to do what it did best in the daytime. It slept.
‘Not very lively,’ Roger complained,
Hal laughed. ‘It will be lively enough when it gets dark,’ he said. ‘You’ll be lucky if you get any sleep tonight. It’s as full of fun at night as it is full of sleep in the daytime. It almost flies. It will be leaping clear across the room. With those big eyes it can see very well in the dark.’
‘What does it eat?’
‘Anything you eat and some things you don’t - fruits, leaves, insects, and even spider’s webs. Have you ever eaten a spider’s web? Delicious. At least, the bush-baby thinks so,’
A little later, Roger collected a playmate for his bush-baby. If the bush-baby looked like a tiny kangaroo, its playmate looked like a miniature edition of an elephant. It actually had a trunk which it usually held upright but could move about in any direction. The whole animal was less than half the size of the bush-baby.
‘What you have there is unique,’ Hal said. ‘An elephant shrew. It’s the smallest of all the mammals.’
‘But it looks so much like the biggest,’ Roger said.
‘That’s Nature’s joke,’ Hal suggested, ‘to make the largest land mammal on earth and the smallest in the same style. It ought to be good company for the bush-baby since they both sleep by day and are lively at night.’
‘But it’s not like the elephant in one way,’ Roger said. ‘It can’t defend itself.’
‘Yes it can. Handle it gently or you’ll find out what it can do. See that little gland on the side of its body? If it doesn’t like you it can spurt out a fluid that would make a skunk hold its nose.’
Roger very carefully slipped the two-inch-long ‘elephant’ into his other pocket.
‘Be careful not to bump that pocket against a tree,’ Hal advised, ‘or you’ll smell as bad as Tieg after he disturbed the civet. But if it’s gently treated it will behave perfectly.’
Roger put his hand in his pocket and stroked the tiny creature. It was as small and soft as a new-born kitten.
‘I don’t suppose either of them is really worth anything,’ he said.
‘You’d be surprised. You’re carrying a hundred dollars in each pocket. Anybody can have a pup or a kitten, but pets like these are very unusual and valuable. Dad will see that they get good homes.’
They climbed out of the forest and up a slope of cinders to stand on the edge of the crater. The volcano was resting but might explode again at any moment. Deep in the crater
was a boiling lake the colour of an orange, for this was one of the few active volcanoes in the world to contain a lake of molten lava. Great bubbles the size of a house swelled up and burst to let out a cloud of steam. There was a constant grinding sound as partly hardened masses of lava were tossed about like pebbles. ‘I’m hot in front and cold behind,’ Roger said. The heat from the boiling lake struck his face, and the wind, always cold at this altitude of two miles, chilled his back.
The view from this perch in the sky was magnificent. To the north a twin volcano, always active but not now in violent eruption, sent up a pillar of smoke. In every direction were dormant volcanoes, except to the south where lovely Lake Kivu stretched away like a great mirror.
Joro joined them. He did not bother about the view but seemed fascinated by the boiling lake. ‘It’s a terrible place,’ he said. The people say that the ghosts of the dead live down there. They stir the fires and the fires send up death. No one can see it or feel it, nor smell it, but it makes a man sleepy and he closes his eyes, his breath stops, his spirit goes to join the ghosts. Not even the medicine men can explain it. It is some kind of witchcraft.’
‘Sounds to me like carbon monoxide,’ Hal said.
‘What is that?’
‘A poison gas. The same gas that comes from the exhaust pipe of a car. On the road, the breeze thins it or blows it away. But in any deep hole like this crater it becomes very strong and a man who breathes it may die without knowing that he is dying,’
‘Look,’ Roger exclaimed. ‘What’s that down there? Something moving. It’s trying to get up, and can’t.’
‘Let’s go down and see,’ Hal said.
‘But how about the gas?’
‘It won’t bother us if we make a quick trip.’
They clambered down the inside slope of the crater and the men followed. It was not more than three hundred feet to the moving thing. Now they could see that it was a female gorilla. But what was that in its arms? A baby gorilla with its eyes closed.
It must be dead,’ Hal guessed. The mother was struggling to climb out of the crater but would not give up the baby.
‘Why do you suppose they came down here?’ Roger wondered.
‘They wouldn’t do it of their own free will,’ Hal said. They must have been trying to get away from somebody or something.’
The men closed around the faithful mother and her dead infant. They tried to catch her and carry her up the slope. When they almost had her, she fell and lay still. Hal felt her pulse. She was dead.
‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ Hal said. He felt sure he was beginning to weaken. The deadly gas was doing its work. ‘Let’s get out of here - fast.’
A crashing sound above hi
m made him look up. A rock the size of a ten-ton truck that had been poised on the edge of the crater was thundering down upon them. The men tried desperately to get out of its way, but one was caught and badly hurt. Carrying the injured man, the others climbed slowly to the top.
Joro examined the spot where the rock had rested. ‘See those prints in the cinders? Men have been here. That rock didn’t just fall - it was pushed.’
‘We’ll follow them,’ Hal said. ‘But first we’ll do what we can for this fellow.’
The man was unconscious from shock. He was bruised and bloody and there were some broken bones. Without a first-aid kit, Hal did what he could. It was half an hour before the man regained consciousness. He got up and tried to walk, but fell again and had to be carried.
‘Now let’s see where these tracks lead,’ Hal said. ‘Joro, that’s your job. Sorry they didn’t wait to face us. Perhaps they’re hiding somewhere, waiting to ambush us as we go down.’
Chapter 16
Take ‘em alive
Hal was soon proved right - and wrong.
Nero and his gang were waiting in ambush, but they had picked a poor hideout. They had chosen a pit some twenty feet deep, masked by trees. It would have been perfect if it had not been for their most deadly enemy, carbon monoxide.
The gas, carried up by the force of the eruption, was heavier than air and therefore had settled down into any windless depressions such as this very pit. Nero and his men, huddled at the bottom of the pit, were now quite incapable of ambushing anybody. Unaware of the reason for the drowsiness, they had breathed the poison gas until they had been overcome by sleep - a sleep that would be permanent unless they were rescued at once.
‘Pull them out,’ Hal ordered.
His men, who usually obeyed him with alacrity, were slow to act. Mali said, ‘Bwana, these are your enemies. They tried to kill you with that rock. They are out to murder you and your brother. Now they are passing out, and nobody can blame you if you let them go.’
Hal disagreed. ‘There’s just one man here who is our enemy. That’s Nero. We’ll arrest him. I think the others are neither enemies nor friends. They simply take his orders. Pull them out, and be quick about it.’
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