A Trip with a Crocodile
Samba looked warily round, then began to descend from his perch in the
tree, moving as slowly and with as many pauses as a timid bather
stepping into the water. Once more he was on the ground. Pausing only
to throw a rapid glance on all sides, he struck off in a direction at
right angles to the course of the stream, and resumed his laborious
march through the forest maze.
Hour after hour he pushed on without meeting a living creature. But he
had heard too much of the cunning and determination of the Congo dwarfs
to delude himself with the idea that he had finally shaken them off.
Tired as he was, sweating in the moist oppressive heat, he dared not
rest, even to eat in comfort the food he had brought in his tin. He
nibbled morsels as he went, hoping that by good speed during the whole
day he might get far enough from the pigmies to make his ultimate
escape secure.
Towards evening he heard in front of him the long monotonous rustle of
a stream foaming over a rocky bed. He was careful in approaching it:
to meet a crocodile ambushed near the bank would be as dangerous as to
meet a man. Pushing his way cautiously through the shrubs, he came to
the edge of a broad river, flowing in swift eddies from white rapids
above. It seemed to Samba that this must be a tributary of the Lemba,
the river on whose bank he had left the white men, and to which, lower
down, he must ultimately make his way. Pursuit by the white men might
now be safely disregarded; Samba thought he could hardly do better than
keep to the stream, taking his chance of meeting negroes at isolated
villages on the banks. These, if he met them, would at any rate be
easier to elude than the Bambute.
But the sun was going down, the air becoming chill. He must find a
shelter for the night and pursue his riverside journey next day. A
little search revealed, on a bluff above the river, a boulder having a
deep cavity on one side. Here Samba sat down to eat the little food
left in his tin; then he curled himself up for the night. Nothing
disturbed his sleep.
In the morning he felt more than usually hungry. His tin was empty; he
did not care to leave the river and go hunting in the forest, perhaps
vainly, for berries or roots. A little way down stream he noticed a
spot where the dark surface of the water was scarcely disturbed by a
ripple; was that a deep pool, he wondered, where fish might be? He
went down to the edge and, leaning flat upon a rock peeped over. Yes;
in the depths he caught the scaly gleam of darting fish.
Springing up, he went to a swampy patch hard by and cut a long,
straight, stiff reed. Then he took the hard stick with which he made
fire, and, sharpening the point until it pricked like a needle, he
fitted the wood to the reed so as to make a spear. With this in his
hand he once more leant over the pool. He lay still for a few moments,
intently watching; then, with a movement of extraordinary swiftness, he
plunged his spear into the depths, and brought it out with a silvery
trout impaled. The fish had stopped to nibble at a root in the bank.
When Samba had thus caught three he was satisfied. He did not pause to
cook the fish. He split them open, dexterously boned and cleaned them,
and ate them raw.
He had scarcely finished his breakfast when he saw, hurtling down the
rapids above him, a huge forest tree--a mass of green, for most of its
branches in full leaf were still upon it. Clearly it had not long lost
its grip of earth. It came swirling towards Samba, every now and then
stopping as its submerged part was caught by some rock, only to be
whirled round and driven past the obstacle by the weight of water
behind. It made a zigzag course through the rapids, and then floated
peacefully down the still reach of water beneath.
As he watched the tree sailing gently towards him, Samba had an idea.
Why not use it as a raft to carry him on his way? It was strong enough
to bear his weight; he could hide in the foliage with at least as good
a chance of escaping observation as if he were moving along the banks.
By the time he had grasped the notion the tree was past him. He sprang
up, raced along until he was level with it, then took a neat header
into the water. A minute's rapid swimming brought him to the end of
the trunk, which, he saw, had been snapped clean off and was not
encumbered by the roots. He clambered up, and the trunk was so long
that his trifling weight scarcely depressed its end. Smiling with
pleasure, he crawled along it until he was in the centre of the leafy
screen.
This, however, now that he was there, did not seem so dense as when he
had viewed it from the bank; he was not concealed so well as he had
hoped. Every now and again, too, his novel raft gave an ominous lurch
and roll, suggesting that the portion above water might at any moment
change places with that below. If that happened, Samba wondered, would
he be able to disengage himself from the tangle of branches and swim
clear? But these momentary fears were banished by the novelty and
excitement of his position. How delightful it was, after his toilsome
and fatiguing journey through the forest, to float down the river
without effort of his own in a leafy arbour that defended him from the
fierce rays of the sun! And his voyage had the pleasures of variety.
Sometimes the foliaged top went first; then, when the branches swept
the bottom of the stream in shallow reaches, the trunk swung round and
went broadside to the current. Sometimes the branches stuck fast, the
current carried the trunk round in a circle, and when an eddy set it
again in motion, the trunk end became the bow of this uneasy ship.
Bump! That was some rock or sandbank; the tree shook, and Samba was
nearly toppled from his perch. Nk'oketo![1] It was all right; the
friendly water had washed the tree clear, and Samba was off again, his
black eyes gleaming with fun as he peered between the branches.
It was early in the afternoon, and very hot even for those latitudes.
Everything seemed asleep. No breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees
along the banks. The air quivered. Samba was dozing, lulled by the
gentle motion of the tree, whose progress had not for some time been
checked.
All at once there was a shock. Samba instinctively clutched a branch
as he felt himself jerked from his seat. His lumbering vessel was
twirling round; and looking through the leaves, he saw that it was
caught by the head on a sandbank in midstream.
But next moment he felt a shiver run down his spine, and an eery
creeping about the roots of his hair. Below him, not four feet away, a
gigantic crocodile was staring at him with his cunning baleful eyes.
The swish of the projecting branches upon the sandbank had aroused the
reptile from his siesta on this vantage ground, whence, at the lazy
opening of an eye, he could survey a long stretch of the river. And he
had awoke to see a plump and tempting black boy at the inconsiderable
altitude of four feet above his snout.
Those who have seen the crocodile only in his hours of ease, lazily
sunning himself on a river bank, or floating with scarcely more than
his eyes and forehead visible on the surface of the stream, may have
come to the comfortable conclusion that he is a slow-moving and
lethargic beast. But see him rushing at the bank to seize in his
terrible jaws the unwary antelope or zebra that has come to drink, or
to sweep it into the river with a single blow of his mighty tail.
Watch him when, roused from his doze on a sandbank, by the sting of a
rifle bullet on his armour, he vanishes with lightning rapidity beneath
the water. At one moment to all seeming as lifeless as a log, the next
he is a raging monster, ready to tear and rend any hapless creature
which his inertness has beguiled.
Of the two, Samba and the crocodile, it was the saurian that first
recovered his wits. His instinct when disturbed at close quarters is
to rush forthwith upon his enemy or victim. Thus did the crocodile
now. Considering that he is a beast not built for jumping, the leap he
attempted, with a spasmodic wriggle of his formidable tail, was quite a
creditable feat. With his teeth he grazed the lower part of the branch
on which Samba sat; and the boy, gazing down into the beast's eyes,
shuddered and shrank away. Fortunate it was for him that his legs had
not been dangling. Nothing could then have saved him.
The reptile, slipping back after its failure, maintained its hold on
the lower branches with its forefeet. Before it could make a second
attempt, Samba had swung himself into the branch above. The tree
toppled slightly, and for one moment of terror Samba feared he would be
thrown into the very jaws of the monster. But the sandbank held the
tree firmly, and that peril was past.
With thick foliage between it and the boy, the crocodile saw no chance
of securing its victim from its present position. But it was
determined not to be balked, and, cunning beast! could afford to wait.
It seemed to know that the boy was only safe so long as he clung to his
perch. On the sandbank, or in the water, his end would alike be
speedy. So the reptile slid off the bank into the water, and swam to
the trunk end of the tree, which had been swung round by the current
and was now pointing down stream. If it could not leap, it could
crawl, and up the trunk the approach to its prey was easy.
Samba's eyes were now wide with fright, as he saw the beast's
intention. Up a tree on the river bank he could have laughed any
crocodile to scorn; but this sandbank in midstream was ground
peculiarly the creature's own, even though the prey was on a branch ten
feet above it. With its experience of sandbanks the crocodile knew
there was no permanency in this arrangement.
The attempts of the huge reptile to gain a footing on the trunk had a
result which caused Samba mingled hope and fear. The tree floated
clear of the bank, and the voyage began again. But how different were
the circumstances! In the stern, no longer a cheerful smiling boy,
carelessly watching the slow banks glide by, but a boy whose hands and
feet gripped his perch with anxious tenacity, and whose scared eyes
were quick to mark every movement of the unwelcome, the abhorred,
passenger amidships. With many a splash of its tail, and many a grunt
of impatient fury, the monster at last made good its footing on the
broad trunk, which under its weight was for more than a quarter of its
length invisible beneath the surface of the water. For some minutes it
lay still, staring at Samba with unwinking eyes, displaying all its
teeth as if to grin sardonically at its victim. Samba regretted for
the moment that he had not swarmed down from his perch and attacked the
crocodile with his knife while he was still struggling to mount the
trunk. But then he reflected that he had after all done wisely, for
the reptile would have slid back into the water, and before Samba could
gain his retreat, he might have been swept off by one swish of the
terrible tail.
Samba, as he had shown more than once, and notably in the recent
incident of the serval, had no lack of courage; but he had never before
been at such close quarters with a crocodile, the most terrible of all
the natural enemies of man in the regions of the Congo. And as he sat
and watched the glassy stare of the hideous reptile now wriggling inch
by inch towards him, he felt a strange helplessness, a kind of
fascination that seemed to chill and paralyse his power of movement as
of thought. He had retreated as far as he dared. His weight had
caused some of the slenderer and more elastic branches to bend towards
the water; he had even imagined that, as he tested them, the pressure
threatened to make the tree revolve. What his fate would be if the
whirling of the trunk on its axis brought him into the river he well
knew. The crocodile would slip as nimbly as an eel after him; and,
entangled in the foliage, which to his armoured enemy would offer no
obstacle, he would fall an easy prey.
The crocodile wriggled on, till it came to the place where the first
branch forked from the trunk. Scarcely more than its own length now
separated it from Samba. Apparently it had come as near as it cared to
venture; not being a climber, the feat of crawling up the tapering
branch on which Samba was perched was not one to its taste. It lay
still, with jaws agape, its eyes half-closed in a kind of wicked leer.
Samba tried to look away from the hideous beast, but in vain; he found
his gaze drawn back uncontrollably. He felt even more subject to the
fascination now that the crocodile's movements had ceased. The
conviction was growing upon him that sooner or later he would slide
down the branch and fall dreamily into the open jaws. He was fast
becoming hypnotized.
But he was roused from this dangerous trancelike state by a sudden roll
of the tree. Perched high as he was, the motion caused him to swing
through an arc of several yards and brought him perilously near the
water. The danger quickened his faculties: he clung on with a tighter
grip, bethinking himself to look whether his fishing spear, which he
had stuck into the bark, was still safe. He was relieved to find that
it was undisturbed. The tree righted itself, and a gleam of hope
lightened Samba's mind when he saw that the crocodile was in the water.
Though, stretched on the trunk, the beast had felt the roll less than
Samba above, it had a less tenacious grip and less ability to adapt
itself; and first the tail, then the rest of its body had slid off. It
was violently struggling to regain its position, its jaw resting on the
trunk, its forepaws furiously beating the water.
The memory of the reptile's former difficulties in mounting inspired
Samba with an idea, which, impelled equally by terror and hate, he was
prompt to act upon. The tree was still rocking slightly before
regaining its steadiness, and the crocodile, despite its efforts, was
unable to gain a firm grip on the moving trunk. All its attention was
engaged upon the accomplishment of its immediate purpose: it would lose
the dainty morsel if it did not once more mount the tree. Samba was
quick to seize the critical moment. Spear in hand he crept downwards
along the branch on which he had been perched, careful that his
movements should not divert the crocodile's attention. Reaching the
junction of the branch with the parent stem, only five or six feet from
the reptile, he let himself down noiselessly into the river on the far
side of the tree, and swam for a second or two until he came opposite
the crocodile. During these few seconds he had been hidden from the
creature's view by the mass of the trunk, which rose out of the water
to some height above his head.
The crocodile had now managed to get its forepaws on the tree, and in
struggling to hoist itself its snout was raised almost upright,
exposing the soft underside, the sole part in which it is vulnerable to
anything except a very heavy bullet. Samba caught sight of the tip of
the snout above the tree; here was the opportunity he had hoped for in
making this hazardous experiment. Taking with his left hand a firm
grip of a wart on the trunk, he raised himself in the water, and with
the right hand drove his spear twice into the monster's throat. The
crocodile made no sound; a lash of the powerful tail drove up a wave
that caused the tree to rock violently: then the huge body slipped
backwards into the water.
The moment he had driven his spear home Samba let go his hold on the
tree, and trod water until the current brought the foliage to him.
Then he drew himself nimbly up into the branch he had formerly
occupied. He was breathless, and scarcely yet recovered from his
scare; but there was no sign of the crocodile, and knowing that the
reptile when mortally wounded sinks into deep water, he felt that his
enemy had gone for ever. He heaved a deep sigh of relief, but chancing
to look back, he noticed with a start of renewed dread that the water
in the wake of the tree was faintly tinged with red. Was it possible
that the crocodile, though wounded, was still following? He felt a
shiver thrill through him, and, bending down from his perch, kept his
eyes fixed in a stare on that ominous sanguine thread.
The minutes passed. Still the water showed that faint persistent
tidge. Samba was becoming more and more nervous. Like the reptile's
eyes but a little while ago, that line of red held his gaze in a
strange fascination. He was still watching it when the tree suddenly
gave a violent lurch, and turned half over. Samba, whose hold had
relaxed in his nervousness, was flung off the branch into a clump of
bushes at the side of the river, which here began to race rapidly
through a deep gorge. Scratched and dazed by the fall he picked
himself up slowly. He rubbed his eyes. What was this? He was in the
midst of a group of pigmies, who were pointing excitedly, uttering
their strange coughing cry, to the branches of the tree. In its lurch
it had been turned almost completely round, so that the foliage
formerly beneath the water was now uppermost. And there, firmly wedged
in a fork of two boughs, lay the lifeless body of the crocodile.
The Bambute jabbered to Samba, stroked his arms, patted his back,
examined the spear which, though it was broken in his fall, he had not
let go. From the bank they had witnessed the boy's bold fight, and
they had followed the course of the floating tree until it ran ashore
on a jutting bed of rock. Samba made signs that he wished to pursue
his journey on foot; but the Bambute shook their heads and grunted and
carried him away with them. Once more he was a prisoner.
[1] Nothing wrong!