Golden Bats & Pink Pigeons

by Gerald Durrell

  As the Dorade rose and sank on the polished blue rollers, I could see what Pike meant. Scanning the cliffs we were now approaching, I could not spot a single place suitable for setting ashore anything less agile than a mountain goat.

  ‘Where is the landing area?’ I enquired of Tony.

  ‘There,’ he said, gesturing vaguely towards the apparently perpendicular rock face. ‘That flat area of rock; that’s where Pike landed.’

  Peering closely, I could just make out a flat protuberance of rock that looked about the size of a dining-room table, against which the blue sea shouldered in a suggestive manner.

  ‘There?’ I asked, disbelievingly.

  ‘There,’ said Tony.

  ‘I don’t wish to seem over-critical,’ I said, ‘but it looks to me as though one would have to be a cross between an exceptionally agile gecko and a Sherpa to get on to that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Gerry,’ said Wahab, grinning, ‘you can only die once.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m so anxious not to squander the experience by using it up too soon.’

  ‘Calmest day I’ve ever seen. There’ll be no difficulty,’ said Tony, seriously.

  There was great activity up in the bows and the anchor rattled overboard into about forty feet of gin-clear water.

  ‘That’s the cave that Nicolas Pike sheltered in when he was caught in the cyclone,’ said Wahab, pointing at the half-moon scoop out of the rocks alongside the landing site.

  ‘The roof’s fallen now, but you can still see the shape of it,’ added Tony.

  I gazed at the half-circle carved out of the cliff bedecked now with a host of shiny, black mud-skippers (that crawled in a most un-fish-like way over the rocks) and a bevy of scarlet and purple crabs, and I remembered Pike’s hair-raising description. It was the actual place, I realised with a feeling of reverence, where he almost lost his ‘unwhisperables’:

  Busy as we were, the elements were collecting their forces more energetically still; and at half-past six the sea suddenly began to roll in heavily, and very soon volumes of water, ten or twelve feet deep, poured over the table rock, where our party had embarked only two hours previously. The wash of the waves swept off our water casks that were about fifty yards from it, and at an elevation of about twenty-five feet; and they were not long before they surged into the cave, nearly reaching the spot where we stood watching the scene in dismay, and cutting off our retreat.

  The captain of the boat, as soon as he saw the sudden change in the weather, raised his anchor and scudded off before the wind, and we soon lost sight of him in the heavy rolling billows.

  All efforts now were turned to securing everything as far as was practicable; but the night was well set in before we had finished, and the whole sky was overcast with heavy clouds. The reverberations of the deep rolling thunder made the mountain tremble, and the vivid flashes of lightning occasionally lit up the foaming, seething mass of waters below us, madly dashing against the rocks, the spray thoroughly drenching us.

  Then came the rain in a deluge to add to our troubles; and it was not long before the torrents rushing down the mountain poured over the precipice forming the roof of our cave, in a cascade twenty feet wide, bringing with them stones of all sizes, that struck the bottom of the cave with great force, and then bounded off into the sea, now and then giving us a sharp blow. Here we remained, the sea gradually encroaching on our quarters, till we were obliged to crowd in the farthest corners, and hold on to prevent our being washed away. Matters were getting too exciting to be pleasant, and we felt some effort must be made to escape from our perilous position.

  The day before, a long rope had been strongly attached to the rock above and one end was hanging down over the precipice; but unluckily it had been placed on the lowest part, where the heaviest body of water was falling. Fortunately, the rope was long, and my comrade emerged from his hiding-place, and, watching his chance, seized the rope and, holding on like grim death, managed to draw it in, and worked it along away from the cascade, thus succeeding in hitching it over the projecting side of the rock, which showed a perpendicular face about thirty feet high. I never saw anything more bravely done, and at the risk of his life, for, a false step, and nothing could have saved him; as it was, he got a severe contusion on his head and side from a stone striking him.

  Nothing daunted, the plucky little fellow, as the smallest and lightest man amongst us, was the first to ascend the rope; and I confess the time we were waiting for the welcome signal of his safe arrival was one of awful suspense, for it was a mere chance if the rope held out, or if he could fight against the wind and driving rain.

  At last, to our great joy, above the roar of the elements we heard his welcome ‘all right!’ I next ascended, and, divested of all but an old blue shirt and trousers, I grasped the rope and swung on to the projecting cliff; and commenced mounting, hand over hand. It was nervous work, swinging thus in mid air, between life and death, as a slip would have sent me into the yawning gulf below. I was soon high enough to rest my feet on the side of the rock, and could hear my friend urging me on in a voice that seemed to come from the clouds. I felt desperately thankful when I arrived at the top, in spite of my hands and feet being lacerated and bleeding, and my body bruised all over, to say nothing of the loss of the greater part of my unwhisperables.

  Our landing on Round Island was considerably less hair-raising than Pike’s experience had been. No sooner had the anchor got a grip on the ocean bed than Tony and the diver slid overboard like otters, carrying two ropes, and soon these were made fast from the Dorade to the shore. As a spider lets forth a thread of silk, waits for it to catch, and then uses it as a guide-line, so these two ropes were to be our guide-lines along which we were to pull and steer the dinghy to the landing site. So we loaded our baskets of food and equipment into the dinghy, piled in ourselves, and were pulled shorewards.

  Now we were closer, with the glare of the sun hidden behind the bulk of the island, we could see for the first time what a curious geological formation it was. The whole island was composed of tuff, and this soft stuff had been smoothed and sculpted by the wind and rain into pleats and scallops, so that the whole island was like a gigantic stone crinoline dropped on the surface of the sea, with here and there, standing up like jagged brocade, turrets, arches, and flying buttresses carved by the elements. I was sorry to see that the only part of the island that appeared to be remotely flat was the rocky area that formed the landing stage. The rest rose precipitously in what appeared to be an unclimbable rock face.

  There was no time to worry about what awaited us on the island, for the tricky moment of disembarkation had arrived. It bore no resemblance to the difficulties that Pike had encountered at this very same spot, but even though it was the calmest anyone could remember, the boat was still lifted and lowered some three feet by the swell, and the bows of the dinghy scrunched and splintered when they touched the rock. The landing was no more difficult than stepping off the back of a rocking-horse on to a nursery table, but the way even that apparently gentle swell could grind the dinghy against the rocks, made you fully aware of the bone-crushing results if you were to miss your footing and place a leg between the boat and the shore. However, both we and the gear were landed without mishap. Picking up our various baskets and bags, we followed Wahab and Tony up the slope between the strangely sculptured pinnacles of rock.

  ‘Will you get these rocks?’ panted Dave. ‘Aren’t they the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen? A sort of Round Island Grand Canyon.’

  A White-tailed tropic bird hung in the sky above us like an ivory Maltese Cross, screaming peevishly, and Dave paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes and reply to it with what appeared to be a blast of invective in its own tongue. Startled, the bird slid away on the wind and disappeared.

  ‘Aren’t they the most beautiful God-damned birds you’ve ever seen?’ enquired Dave.

  I made no reply. Weighted down with a ‘fridge-full’ of iced drinks and a s
election of cameras and binoculars, I had no breath for imitations or speech, and I wondered how Dave had. The surface of the rock appeared smooth, but in places it was covered with a thin crust, ready to peel away, like the skin off an over-enthusiastic sunbather’s back, and in other parts with a fine smattering of granules. Both these surfaces, if trodden on unwarily, made one’s feet slide, which either meant that one lost a yard of ground or that one slid ungracefully, and with ever increasing momentum, into the sea below. Although it was only seven o’clock, the air was warm and moist and sticky with salt, and the sweat poured down us in torrents. The equipment became heavier with each step and the slope appeared to become more vertical as we climbed. Wahab paused above us and looked back, grinning and wiping the sweat from his bronze face.

  ‘It is not far now,’ he called. ‘There is the picnic tree.’

  I looked to where he was pointing, and there, high above us (as unattainable as the tip of Everest), I saw the curious fan-like leaves of the pandanus, beckoning us like green hands. It seemed an age before we reached the tree, which stood on a series of thick, leg-like roots. We paused thankfully in the small pools of shade cast by its leaves, stacked the food in the shade and sorted out the equipment we needed for our hunt. As we did this, there suddenly emerged from every nook and cranny around us, as if summoned by the flute of some invisible Pied Piper, a host of large, fat, shiny skinks with bright, intelligent eyes.

  ‘Look!’ croaked John, his spectacles misting over with emotion. ‘Just look at them! Telfarii.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Wahab, beaming at John’s obvious delight. ‘They are very tame. They always join the picnic under the tree. Later, we will feed them.’

  ‘Did you ever see anything so God-damned cute?’ demanded Dave. ‘Just look at those sons-of-bitches. Tame as a chorus of rabbits.’

  The skinks were handsome lizards with heavy square-looking bodies, short legs, and long tails. They held their heads high as they moved with graceful, slithering motions towards us and proceeded to climb all over our piles of equipment. They were coloured a sober but pleasing shade of grey or brown, but when the sunlight hit them at a certain angle, their smooth scales, like mosaic-work, suddenly bloomed into purple, green, peacock-blue and gold, rainbowed like a film of oil on a roadside puddle. This skink, Telfair’s skink or telfarii, was one of the species we had come so far to collect, and far from appearing elusive, here was a welcoming committee going through our baggage with all the thoroughness of a band of elegant Customs officers.

  Since these specimens seemed so eager to be caught, it seemed to us more sensible to concentrate on the two other species we had come for. One was Gunther’s gecko, of which it had been estimated that only five hundred specimens remained on the island, and the other a small species of skink which, Tony and Wahab informed us encouragingly, only inhabited the summit of Round Island. Tony suggested that it would be a good idea to search for the Gunther’s gecko first, since they inhabited scattered palm trees on the western slopes of the island, which would not, as yet, have received the full force of the sun.

  Before we set out, Wahab, with a great flourish, produced a bag of straw hats he had chosen for everyone. The majority were broad-brimmed and these he reserved for us, as guests. In consequence, the only one he could find for himself was a cloche hat belonging to his wife, in elegant magenta and white straw, with a pink ribbon to tie under the chin. This, he donned with perfect seriousness, and was somewhat surprised at our laughter.

  ‘But the sun is very hot,’ he explained, ‘and one needs a hat.’

  ‘And very beautiful you look, Wahab,’ said Ann. ‘Don’t take any notice of them. They’re only jealous because they don’t look so handsome.’

  Thus placated, Wahab gave us his searchlight grin and insisted on wearing his ridiculous headgear for the rest of the day.

  We had landed some three-quarters of the way down the eastern side of the island, and we now made our way along the slopes towards the northern tip, moving among the scattered Round Island palms and the thickets of pandanus which grew in patches on the barren hillside. As well as being moulded into smooth longitudinal folds and ridges, the soft tuff had been gouged out in places by winter rains and the last cyclone (delicately, and inappropriately, called ‘Gervaise’) into long, deep gashes in the hillside, running from the steep upper slopes down to the sea, down which were carried avalanches of what top-soil remained and rocks of considerable size. Some of these ravines were, in places, ten to fifteen feet in depth, and forty to fifty feet across. I thought bitterly, as I panted my way moistly across the scorching rocks, that this moonscape had been created by the interference of man.

  We had hardly travelled a hundred yards, spread out, and peering hopefully at every palm frond, when Wahab sang out that he had found a guntheri. We scrambled and panted our way across the hot rocks, tripping over the small weed, not unlike a convolvulus, which in places formed mats covered with pale lavender and pink flowers and was, in spite of the rabbits, making a valiant but forlorn attempt to keep the soil in position against the onslaught of rain and wind. When we reached Wahab, he pointed up at the main stem of a pandanus frond. Having wiped the sweat from my eyes, I peered up, and eventually saw the guntheri, spread-eagled and flattened, with its mottled-grey and chocolate skin, lichen-grey flecked, making it look like a discolouration on the bark. It was large for a gecko, being some eight inches long, with great, golden eyes and plate-like protuberances on its toes, which contain the suction pads which enable it to hang on to the smooth surface with a fly-like ability. It clung there, secure in the feeling that it was well enough camouflaged, regarding us calmly from great, golden brown-flecked eyes with vertical pupils, which gave it a strange cat-like appearance.

  ‘Will you look at that?’ panted Dave. ‘Isn’t that the largest God-damned gecko you’ve ever seen? What a magnificent specimen!’

  After some argument, we decided that the honour of the first capture belonged to Dave. He prepared himself on a safe foothold, and then edged the bamboo pole forward, the nylon noose dangling from the end, flittering like a fish scale in the sunlight. I prayed that this sparkle would not panic the lizard, but he hung there without movement, regarding us benevolently. We all held our breath, while Dave moved the noose forward inch by inch. Now he had it dangling just in front of the gecko’s nose. This was the crucial moment, for he had to ease the noose over the animal’s head and then snap it tight round its fat neck, all without alarming it. Slowly, by infinitesimal stages, he stroked the nylon down the palm rib. Just when it was almost touching the gecko’s nose, the animal raised its head and looked with interest at the noose. We all froze. Several seconds passed, and then, as gently as though he were stroking a spider’s web, Dave eased the noose, millimetre by microscopic millimetre, over the creature’s head. Then he took a deep breath and jerked the noose tight round the gecko’s neck The gecko tightened his grip on the branch, so that it appeared to be glued to it and, without losing its tenacious hold, wagged its head from side to side to rid itself of the nylon. The problem was now to grab the gecko before it struggled too much and the nylon thread cut into the delicate skin of the neck. This was where John’s six-foot-two came in useful. Swiftly, he grabbed the base of the frond and bent it down, with the other hand engulfing the gecko, as it came within reach.

  ‘Got it!’ he squeaked, in tremulous triumph.

  Carefully, the noose was disentangled from the lizard’s velvety soft neck and he was placed in a cloth bag. We continued on our way, and found the guntheri was much more common than we had been led to believe, though this side of the island, with its comparatively well-wooded slopes, was obviously a favourite resort for them, providing shade and food – or as much shade and food as the spartan surroundings of Round Island allowed. For an hour, we picked our way carefully over ravines and along the tortured slopes, where an incautious foot would send rocks bounding and crashing down the precipitous slopes, carrying avalanches of dry tuff with them. Freque
ntly, multicoloured rabbits scurried out from under our feet, and we came upon numerous signs of their profligate tenancy: the convolvulus-type creeper cropped; low, baby palms with their tops amputated; slopes burrowed into so as to cause the maximum erosion.

  We had walked about a quarter of the circumference of the island. The sun, which when we had started had been hidden behind the bulk of the island, now rose above it. It was like standing in front of a suddenly open oven door. The air seemed thick to breathe, almost like a soup of moisture, heavily larded with salt. The Martian landscape shimmered in the heat haze as though it was under water.

  It was interesting to watch my companions. Ann had wandered off somewhere by herself, and so we were an all-male group. Wahab, wearing his ridiculous poke-bonnet, was peering up into the palms earnestly, humming to himself and periodically producing from his pocket a paper bag, full of sticky sweets, and offering them round. John, tall and lanky, glasses always on the point of misting over completely, was quivering with eagerness, determined not to waste a single instant of this time in the herpetological paradise that he had dreamt and talked of for so long. Then there was Dave, with his trumpet voice, anxious and enthusiastic, as full of snap, crackle and pop as any breakfast cereal, spilling superlatives out like a Hollywood film advertisement, interspersed with more animal noises than are necessary for the successful rendering of ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’. Then Tony, dressed in his faded green shirt and khaki trousers, merging into the landscape like a chameleon, answering any query with a staccato flood of information, by far the most un-fussed and organised of us all. From a minute basket, he seemed able to produce at any given moment anything from hot tea to marmalade sandwiches, from cold curry and rice to orange squash. So impressed was I by this conjurer’s ability that I felt, if asked, Tony could have produced a dining-table, candelabra, napery, dinner jackets, so that we could have sat down on the bleak slopes of Round Island, and partaken of a meal in the traditional way that, mythology assures us, Englishmen observe in the tropics.