07 Elephant Adventure (12 page)

But Joro was not to be the only one. In a few moments Toto, the gunbearer, arrived, panting. When Hal looked at him in surprise he said:

‘I thought you might need this.’ He patted the big rifle. ‘All right,’ Hal said. ‘I’ll take it, and you go back.’ Toto clung to the rifle. ‘No, no - it is for me to carry.’ After all, he was very proud of his job. The gunbearer on an African safari is an important person. He must keep the weapon in good condition and be ready to put it into the hands of his master at a second’s notice. Toto had never failed, and Hal was sure he never would.

He was also sure of the rest of his men and was not surprised when they came up, one by one, until the number was complete.

The rain was falling heavily, and the cloud that it came from had settled down around the travellers so that they could hardly see ten feet ahead.

But they could -still make out the elephants’ tracks, the large boot-prints, and the prints of bare feet. Among these were smaller prints probably made by the feet of the chiefs son.

‘Poor little Bo!’ Hal said. ‘Such a handsome lad. They tell me all the boys and girls that have been taken were the handsome ones. Why should the kidnappers care whether they were good-looking or not?’

‘I think I know,’ Joro said. ‘But I am not sure.’

‘What do you think you know?’

The kidnap men - they are slavers. They steal boys and girls and then sell them. They want only beautiful ones because they can sell them for much money.’

Roger perked up his ears.

‘You really mean - sell them?’

‘Yes, bwana.’

‘But that isn’t allowed. I mean - there are laws. All that old slave trade, it was stopped about a hundred years ago.’

‘Joro may be right,’ Hal said. ‘Of course, the big slave trade across the Atlantic was stopped long ago. But the little slave trade still goes on through Africa’s back door - over here on the Indian Ocean side. Of course there are laws against it. Heavy fines if the slavers get caught But they get away with it when no one is looking. There was a long story about it in the Nairobi papers only two weeks ago.’

‘But how do they do it? Where will they take Bo, and these other kids?’

‘Probably to the Arabian peninsula. Up there they pay a lot for slaves.’ He looked at Roger with a calculating eye. Td say you might bring a cool thousand dollars. More if you were handsome.’

Thanks - I’m not for sale. It all sounds like hooey to me. How could those desert rats pay such prices for slaves?’

‘Desert rats, indeed! There are plenty of millionaires in the Arab countries. The sheiks own oil wells, and the more oil wells they have the more they can afford to pay for slaves. They take pride in having as many as possible. Instead of counting a man’s wealth in the number of Cadillacs he owns, people count in slaves - ‘he’s only a ten-slave sheik’, or ‘he’s a thousand-slave sheik’. It is estimated that there are half a million slaves in the Arabian peninsula and the number is increasing by about ten thousand a year. It’s good business for the dhows.’ ‘What are dhows?’

‘Joro can tell you - he lives down on the coast near Mombasa.’

The dhows.’ Joro explained, ‘are Arab ships with sails but no engines. They come down to our coast with a load of carpets and shawls, dried shark, flamingo salt, dates, and oil in tall jars. They take back cargoes of timber, charcoal, coffee, some animals - and slaves. Most of these dhows come between December and April. Then we send our young people away into the forest so they will not be taken. When the south-west monsoon begins to blow the dhows sail away and we bring home our young people. But we never get all of diem back. The smugglers even go far into the forest to steal them. It’s big business.’

‘So big,’ Hal said, ‘that the United Nations hat appointed a committee to investigate it They find it a hard nut to crack. It will take years to stop it - but they hope to put an end to it by 1980. Joro, have you actually seen these dhows loading slaves?’

‘I have seen. They creep into small bays near my home at night. I hide in the bushes and watch. I see the blackbirders…’

‘What are blackbirders?’ Roger asked.

‘Just another name for the slave-runners,’ Hal put in.

‘I see the blackbirders,’ Joro went on, ‘come out of the forest driving the ones they have taken. The boys and the girls, they have chains on their ankles, and they are very tired and some of them are crying. If they refuse to do as the blackbirders say they are whipped. Also there are a few elephants, gazelles, and cattle - the sheiks of Araby pay good money for them. The blackbirders drive all on board, tie the animals on deck, and put the young people down in the hold, which has no light and no air and smells very bad.’

‘Have you been on one of these dhows?’

‘Many times. I go to sell coffee from my farm. Last year there was no coffee, I was very poor, and I took a job on a dhow. We sailed at midnight The dhow goes fast on the wind because its hull is smeared with fish oil to make it slip easily through the water. Still the voyage took many days. Then we landed on a desert coast.

Many people had come on camels and in cars to buy slaves. The boys and girls of Africa were driven out of the ship and up on to what they called the dakkat al abeeb, the slave platforms, where everybody could see them. The children were very sad. The chains had made sores on their ankles. They were hungry, and the sun was very hot. But the slavers had no pity. There was a man who did the selling.’ ‘An auctioneer?’ Hal suggested. ‘Yes. He brought out a boy - about as old as Bo. He said, ‘How much for this boy?’ He made him walk up and down. He was sold to the one who would give most. He was thrown on a camel like a sack of coffee and he was taken away. All the children - they were all sold and taken away. The animals too. The dhow sailed back to Africa to get more. 1 went back to my farm. I do not like the dhows. I will never go on another dhow.’

‘I should think,’ Roger said, ‘the United Nations could clear this thing up in no time if they’d just go on board these dhows with some soldiers and set the kids free.’

They tried,’ Hal said. They voted on it - to give the U.N. the right to search and seize slave ships. Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen blocked the plan. Russia also voted no.’

it all sounds too wild,’ Roger said, ‘You mean to tell me, if I walked into one of these slave markets I could buy a slave?’

‘Of course. And I heard of an Englishman who did it. He was Viscount Maugham, a member of the House of Lords which refused to believe that slavery still existed. He wanted to show them that it did. On a motor trip through the Sahara he stopped near Timbuctoo and bought a twenty-year-old slave named Ibrahim for £36.

He reported this to the House of Lords. He said, ‘Of course, 1 gave him his freedom. I only wanted to prove that slavery still flourishes.’ ‘

‘Yeah, but when? I’ll bet that was a couple of hundred years ago.’

‘It was in August 1960. And just a few weeks ago something stranger than that happened. A lot of British farmers got a circular from a white man in Southern Rhodesia offering to sell them black men for £145 down and £5 a month for two years. I doubt if he made any sales. But it just shows what goes on. And I’ll bet this fellow with the big boots who took Bo is a blackbirder.’

1 smelt him,’ Joro said. ‘He had the smell of the dhows.’

‘Well I hope you smell him again, and soon,’ Roger said ‘We’d better speed up if we’re going to get Bo before he’s shipped away in some stinking dhow.’

They came to the edge of the lake. Here the tracks ended. Even the expert tracker, Joro, was puzzled.

‘They were very clever,’ he said. There is no way to tell where they went from here. We know that they went into the water - but then what? They may have turned left and gone off through the shallow water near the shore. They may have turned right and followed that shore. They could have swum across the lake - but in what direction?’

‘Could the elephants swim?’ Roger asked.

‘They swim very well,’ Hal said. ‘But they often prefer to walk. If the water isn’t too deep, they walk along the bottom even if their heads have to be under water.’

Then how do they breathe?’

‘By putting the end of their trunk up above the surface, like a periscope.’

‘But they must leave tracks in the lake bottom,’ Roger said.

Joro was peering into the water. If there were any tracks, he would surely see them. He waded into the shallows, still looking. He could see even less now, because his wading raised a light, powdery mud that turned the water brown. His feet sank up to the ankles in the squishy mud.

He came back to shore. The sediment he had stirred up slowly settled and the water cleared. His footprints had filled again. There was no sign whatever of his tracks. The same thing must have happened to the tracks of the elephants and the blackbirders. The mud pudding had flowed into them and left a lake bottom as smooth as if it had never been disturbed.

‘But they must have come out of the lake somewhere,’ Hal said. ‘We can just follow the lake shore all the way round until we get to the place where the footprints come out’

Joro did not seem so sure that this would work, but there was nothing else to do. They set out to the left along the shore, Joro in the lead, watching carefully for tracks. The cold rain kept pouring down and the men were distinctly uncomfortable and almost rebellious.

At the west end of the lake the walking grew worse. The ground was no longer solid, but only a soft muck of deep, black mud into which the men sank up to their knees. Consulting his map, Hal found that this was the famous Beego Bog - explorers had written about its terrors. It was like a thick soup made of equal parts of soil and water. It sucked a man’s foot down and down so that it was difficult to pull it out and take another step. You couldn’t call it a quicksand because there was no sand. You might call it a quickmud. Joro suddenly went in up to his waist. The other men had to haul him out Then the mist cleared a little and Roger cried:

‘Look! Our elephants!’

Two elephants could be dimly seen, one large, one not so large.

Roger stumbled ahead so eagerly that he tripped on a mossy tussock and went head first into the mud bath. The pudding closed over him and there was no Roger.

Hal and Toto groped about in the mud and at last found his arms and pulled him out He was a sad-looking affair, plastered with mud from head to foot, but he wiped the mushy stuff out of his eyes and struggled on, calling to his little elephant:

‘Big Boy! Am I glad to see you! ‘

Then he saw that it was not Big Boy, and the larger elephant also was a stranger. And they were in trouble. The smaller one, a young bull, was stuck in the mud hole, and the larger, apparently its mother, was trying to get it out.

The men, so deep in mud that they were hardly able to move, could do nothing but watch.

The young bull squealed with fright. He was steadily sinking. Every time he struggled he sank a little deeper.

His mother wrapped her trunk around his and tried to lift him. It didn’t work. She got her tusks under his flank and heaved, but he did not budge.

She looked towards the men and trumpeted for help. But they could not help. Then she took the last desperate measure, though it might cost her her own life.

She plunged her head under the surface and ran it beneath the body of the young bull so that his weight came on the back of her neck. Then she hoisted with all her gigantic strength.

Up came the young bull, his feet making loud sucking noises as they were pulled free of the mud. He struggled over grass lumps and through holes until he got to firm ground. There he stood, breathing hard, and looking

back.

He could not see his mother. Her mighty effort to lift him out of the quickmud had made her sink so deep that she could not pull free. Her body was now completely submerged except for the tip of her trunk, which still rose a few inches above the surface, drawing in air. A minute later this also disappeared.

Greater love than this, no mother, animal or human, ever had for her child. The men stood looking with open

mouths, and tears rolled down some of the black faces. Africans do not weep easily.

Then they woke up to the fact that they would join the big elephant in a watery grave if they did not get out of this infernal bog. Wallowing and splashing through the liquid mud, they stumbled up finally on to solid ground beside the young bull.

The youngster trembled with cold and kept calling for his mother. He paid no attention to the men. He was larger and older than Big Boy, but he had probably never seen humans before and had no reason to be afraid of them. So when Roger walked up to him and started wiping away the mud from his eyes and round his mouth he took it as a matter of course. When Roger moved away he did as all young elephants are inclined to do when deprived of their mothers. He followed the new friend.

The men had had enough. Hal could not ask them to do more - not today. Besides, as Joro pointed out, the rain must by this time have wiped out all tracks. So they made the long dreary march back to camp.

Roger was really hungry now, but as they passed through the bamboo forest under the eyes of muttering gorillas, he had no appetite whatever for bamboo shoots. Chief Mumbo ran to meet the mud-plastered hunters as they entered the village. ‘Did you find my son?’ Hal sadly shook his head.

The chief raised his grief-stricken eyes to the unseen mountains and murmured:

It is the will of the Thunder-man. I shall never see my son again.’

‘Don’t give up yet,’ Hal said. ‘We haven’t quit trying. By the way, have you notified the Congo police?’

‘We sent a messenger down to Mutwanga. I think it will do no good. The Congo is a country of much trouble - the police are too busy to hunt for one small boy.’ Shaking his head mournfully he returned to his house.

Hal and Roger and all their muddy men plunged into the lake. The young bull followed and Roger sent to the supply wagon for a stiff brush with which he gave the hide a thorough scrubbing, much to the delight of the elephant who showed his pleasure with a deep rumbling purr. He sucked up water in his trunk and flung it over himself and everyone else.