07 Elephant Adventure (17 page)

They arrived at the lake shore to find the safari men waiting patiently and the police impatiently, while Hal used all his powers of persuasion to hold them steady.

When they saw Roger walk in with a spray gun in his hands and a baby elephant at his heels, they were full of questions. Roger gave them no answers. He peered about through the fog, searching for the white elephant

‘Am I in time?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Did the blackbirders get the big white?’

‘Not yet’ Hal said. ‘But you’re not a minute too soon. They’re on the way here. We sent out a scout and he has just come back with some bad news. They have a lot more men than we thought Twice as many as we have. And they’re all armed with pistols. Our police have only their spears; and our safari men, only knives - except Toto.’

Since the Hunt safari was a take-‘emalive outfit not a shooting safari, usually only one rifle was carried, and that was now in the hands of Toto, the gunbearer.

‘If they come all in a bunch,’ Hal went on, ‘we cant possibly beat them. But if your paint-pot idea works maybe we can confuse them and scatter them, and then pick them off one by one/

‘Well, let’s get to it But where’s our white?’

‘Over there. Behind those rocks.’

Roger, squinting through the fog, at first could make out nothing but black-and-white rocks. Then one of the white ‘rocks’ moved - and a black ‘rock’ changed position and threw up its trunk and screamed.

The boys sneaked up on the black elephant It saw them and began to move away. They broke into a run and reached it in time to spray one flank and then the other with the white paint.

Now its own mother wouldn’t know it In ten seconds the black elephant had become a white elephant It rambled off, still screaming.

‘I hope it goes right on squawking,’ Hal said. The more it has to say, the more likely they are to find it’

Between the blasts of the black elephant, there was a new sound - the voices of the approaching robbers.

Hal gave some quick orders. He sent half of his men on the trail of the painted elephant The others were told to retreat from the lake shore and hide behind rocks near the white elephant.

He prayed that the mist would remain thick - thick enough so that Roger’s clever plan would get results.

Perhaps the Mountains of the Moon heard the prayer. At any rate, they co-operated with the very stickiest and pea-soupiest of fogs.

Loud shouts in Arabic came through the gloom. Hal and Roger could guess what was going on and they were very happy about it. The blackbirders were chasing the painted elephant.

Now it was time for the white elephant to do her part If she would kindly scream, she would distract the robbers and some of them would come to investigate. So the robber band would be divided and would more easily be overcome.

But the big white was too placid a beast to raise her voice in a scream. Roger’s plan was on the edge of failure.

Hal saved it Suddenly he let loose with a perfect elephantine performance, beginning with a deep bellow and running up the scale to a piercing shriek. He followed it with another, and another.

At once there came the scrambling sound of running feet and a blackbirder appeared. The police caught him and overpowered him before he could use his pistol. He wag immediately tied hand and foot. One in the bag!

Another burst through the fog, and was nabbed. Three came all at once, and were taken, but one of them had time to fire his pistol and a policeman fell.

Now they came by the dozen, and the safari men joined the police in overcoming them and tying them up. One of Hal’s best men, Mali, was shot in the arm. He kept on

fighting.

‘Later.’ he said, when Hal offered him first aid.

Roger ran to see how the war was going for the painted elephant From behind a rock he watched with glee as the blackbirders bearing down upon the imitation white elephant were picked off and bound. Some were easily caught, for they stood confused, hearing elephant voices in two directions and not knowing which way to go.

Others who got close enough to their quarry to see that it was really just an ordinary elephant with a coat of paint stood bewildered, cursing the trick that had been played upon them.

Suddenly Roger heard a scream that couldn’t have come from Hal’s throat.

He ran back to discover that some blackbirders who had managed to get to the white elephant were pricking it with their sabres, to drive it towards their camp, where-ever that might be. The animal responded with screams of pain and anger.

Perhaps these were some of the same men who had cruelly cut off an elephant’s trunk so that the enraged beast would run wild over the safari camp and the village.

Their brutal methods this time bad a result that they were not expecting. The usually good-natured animal whirled about in sudden fury, stabbed two men with her tusks, crushed one under her great forefeet and flailed about with her trunk, knocking men to the ground at every sweep. The rest leaped out of her way, only to be grabbed by safari men or police.

That clinches it, Hal thought. We’ve got them licked.

But he had forgotten the Thunder-man.

At one moment Hal was surrounded by drifting pillars of fog. At the next moment, one of the pillars became dark and solid and Hal stood face to face with the chief of the blackbirders.

The robber sheik smiled his mean smile. ‘How very fortunate!’ he said. ‘You are exactly the person I wanted to meet’ He drew his pistol.

‘Wait,’ Hal said. ‘I have no gun. You can shoot me with that thing - but what would that prove? Just that you are a coward. If you are a man, put your gun away. Fight me hand to hand.’

The blackbirder slapped the pistol back into its sheath. His smile went black.

‘You call a sheik of Araby a coward?’

He hurled his great bulk forward. Taller than Hal. heavier by far, he came on like a runaway locomotive.

At the last instant, Hal stepped aside, used a judo flip that he had learned in Japan, and the sheik’s great weight and momentum became his own undoing. Instead of being blocked, as he had expected, he was propelled forward even faster.

He tripped, fell, and crashed his great head against a rock. There he lay senseless.

He might recover at any moment Hal worked fast He had no rope, and there were no vines to be had. He tore strips from the big man’s gaudy burnous and firmly tied him up.

The sheik opened his eyes. He struggled vainly. Through the fog came some of the police, also Toto. The police stepped warily about the trussed-up giant and looked in amazement at Hal.

‘They say you must have used white man’s magic.’ Toto said.

Hal, remembering that he owed his success to an Oriental art, said, It was magic all right, but not the white man’s.’

While the police with the help of the safari men were getting the defeated slavers together for the march down the mountain on the way to a Congolese prison, Hal and Roger had other business.

Roger’s little elephant, Big Boy, had been concealed behind a great rock in the care of one of the men. The little fellow’s snorts and squeals had attracted the great white female.

Now the boys found the two elephants together. They were already friends. This was exactly what Roger had hoped for. It was elephant nature. A motherless baby elephant will take to any grown-up, and an adult female elephant will become an ‘aunt’ to any baby that needs her help. So the two were already nuzzling trunks and talking to each other in throaty gurglings

When the little one saw Roger he waddled over to the boy and followed him as he started down the mountain.

Now came the acid test. Would the big white come, or not? She now had reason to hate humans, for the sabres of blackbirders had given her pain. Would she guess the difference between her enemies and her friends? Force had failed to take her. Would gentleness succeed?

She stood looking at the departing baby. A hundred yards, two hundred yards, and still she did not move.

Then Big Boy looked back at her and squealed. Even stupid non-elephants like Hal and Roger could understand his language. He was plainly saying, ‘Please come with us.’

‘Oh very well, if you need me,’ was Auntie’s plain reply, and she put her big beautiful body in slow motion on the trail of her three new friends.

The trip to camp was accomplished without incident On the following day the two elephants journeyed aboard a truck to Mombasa, there to await shipment to the Tokyo Zoo. A cable to the zoo had brought a message of appreciation and a promise that the two animals would not be separated. The price of fifty thousand dollars for the white elephant was confirmed and ten thousand dollars guaranteed for Big Boy.

The boys sent this message to their father:

MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON NEARLY HAD US DOWN. FAILED TO TAKE ANY ELEPHANTS EXCEPT A BABY AND AN ADULT WHITE. SENDING TO TOKYO ZOO.

John Hunt replied:

DID YOU SAY WHITE? GREATEST PRIZE IN THE WORLD. CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CONQUERORS OF THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON.