06 African Adventure (8 page)

He knows how far an average rifle will shoot and keeps just far enough away to be out of range. He likes to tease the man with the gun. He will put his head down, look at the hunter from between his legs and make faces at him.

Only the birds have sharper eyes. Scientists credit the baboon with eyes equal to eight-power binoculars.

When they make a raid on the farmer’s crops, one of them stays up in the top of a tree to act as a sentinel. He gives warning of any approaching danger.

But he knows the difference between a man and a woman. Also the difference between a man with a gun and a man unarmed. He gives a shrill alarm when he sees a gunman, a mild alarm when he sees a man without a gun. no alarm whatever at the appearance of an unarmed woman.

A ranger had told Hal that the baboons knew his car and kept well away from it. When he wanted to approach them closely he had to use another car. Also the baboons recognized the uniforms of the African game-scouts, who are called askaris. When a farmer saw his crops being ruined by animals, he would call the askaris. They would come in, shoot some of the marauders, and scare off the rest.

That would work very well if the animals were rhinos, buffaloes, hippos, wart-hogs, forest pigs, or even elephants. It didn’t work with baboons. As soon as they saw the uniforms, they didn’t wait to be shot at. They disappeared as if by magic. When the askaris had gone, they would return and continue their thievery.

To get close enough to shoot them, the askaris must take off their uniforms and put on plain clothes so that they looked like ordinary villagers. And as they walked towards the baboons they must conceal their guns behind their backs.

Even so, a baboon sentinel up a tree might catch sight of a gun and give the alarm, whereupon every baboon would promptly vanish.

The baboon is smart enough to know what is good to eat. He is not like the lion who will eat no grass, the elephant who will eat no meat, the crocodile who will eat no vegetables, the leopard who will eat no shrubbery, or the giraffe who eats only the leaves of trees.

The baboon, like the human being, has learned the value of many different kinds of food. He enjoys fruit, berries, sprouts, vegetables, insects, worms, snails, young birds, and when he is very hungry he may kill and eat pigs, sheep, lambs, goats, chickens, and dogs.

He has one great advantage over man. A man cannot take more food if his stomach is already full. A baboon can. He stores the extra food in his cheek pouches. He keeps it there until there is room for it in his stomach. Then he takes it out of these storage pockets, chews, and swallows it.

A scorpion is dreaded by most animals because of the poisonous stinger at the end of its tail. The intelligent baboon does not worry about that. He knows exactly where the stinger is and how to pinch it off and throw it away. Then he eats the scorpion.

If you let baboons alone they will let you alone. That’s a pretty good general rule. But it’s not always true. Suppose someone else has made the baboons very angry.
Then you happen to come along. They may take out their anger on you.

Hal faced three hundred angry baboons. Certainly he had done nothing to provoke them. Had anyone else annoyed them? Had anyone from the camp been in the woods today?

He could think of no one until his eye happened to rest upon a pale-green dust on the ground. Ant-poison! The blundering Colonel Bigg had been there and left a trail of poison.

But why should that bother the baboons? They were wise enough not to eat poison.

A pitiful wailing like the loud crying of a woman came from a female baboon whose arms wrapped round a screaming baby. Suddenly Hal understood. The small baboon’s lips were covered with a pale-green foam.

Not as wise as its elders, it had eaten some of the green poison. Now it was suffering terrible pain. It twisted, writhed and screamed in its agony. Death was not far away.

The troop could not punish Colonel Bigg, but here was a man they could kill and they showed every intention of doing so. They bared their great canine teeth, furiously barked and screamed, and danced up and down with rage. Hal knew that one false move on his part would bring them upon him like an avalanche. If he picked up a stone and threw it, that would seal his own fate.

He stood perfectly still and calculated his chances. If he turned his back on them and ran, they could overtake him.

Perhaps he could quietly withdraw. He took one step backward, then another. He heard baboon voices behind him. He turned and saw that his escape was cut off. The three hundred baboons had so distributed themselves that they completely surrounded him.

Now they were beginning to move in on him and their angry jabbering rose to a high pitch. One by one they would leap forward, then back, then forward again. Each of these cavortings would leave them a little closer to their victim.

Hal gave up any idea of escape. He would try something else. If baboons were so intelligent, he would appeal to their intelligence.

Instead of retreating farther, he took a step forward. The surprised baboons shrank back a little and there was sudden silence.

Quietly, Hal spoke to them. He said anything that came to his mind. It didn’t matter what the words were, because they couldn’t understand words. But they could understand the tone of his voice. It was gentle and kind, and there was no fear in it.

As he spoke, he looked at the suffering youngster. He loosed the strap from his shoulder and held his canteen out at arm’s length. He shook the canteen slightly so that the splash of the liquid could be heard. Then he raised the canteen to his lips as if to take a drink. Again he stretched it out towards the baby, all the time speaking gently.

He took another step forward. Immediately the baboon mother screamed and began to back away. But the baboons behind her did not let her go.

Three grave, wise old fellows seemed to be reasoning with her in a sort of conversation made up of low grunts and barks. They appeared to be saying:

‘Perhaps he isn’t so bad after all. Perhaps he can help your baby.’

The mother was hard to convince. She clutched her infant more closely and tried to slip away. When Hal took two more slow steps forward, she screamed with terror and that started the baby shrieking once more. Some of the other man-haters in the troop began roaring anew, and their savagely bared teeth did not make Hal any more comfortable.

He stood perfectly still until the noise died down. Then he spoke soothingly and offered the canteen once more.

It was the baby itself that decided in favour of Hal. It watched him with great round eyes, then reached out its hand towards the canteen. Hal did not move. The baby, straining to clutch the canteen, tried to free itself from its mother’s grip. It had the curiosity of any child, the desire to get hold of a strange new thing and play with it.

It began a loud whimpering. The mother, losing patience, turned her brat upside-down and whacked its little red bottom. She tried again to escape, but now she was completely walled in.

Hal had only a few feet more to go. He went down on one knee. Now he did not look quite so terrifying.

Little by little he inched forward. His heart was beating wildly. He was quite aware that this was a dangerous experiment. Perhaps this strong, bitter coffee would counteract the poison. On the other hand, perhaps it would kill the patient. If it did, the ‘doctor’ would promptly be ripped up into small pieces by three hundred sets of savage teeth.

Suspiciously the baboons watched. How could they be sure that the stuff in this thing was not more poison? But Hal’s manner and voice quieted their fears,

Like all animals, they respected courage. If Hal had bolted, they would have been on him in a minute. His easy, steady advance had them puzzled and almost convinced

One last, long reach and the baby had clutched the canteen. Hal did not allow it to be drawn from his hand. He shuffled forward a little closer to his patient in spite of the angry muttering around him. He removed the cap from the canteen.

Then very slowly, he raised the canteen, tipped it, and let a little of the contents drip out.

The baby instinctively opened its mouth to catch the dripping liquid. Hal poured the coffee down its throat The baby choked and sputtered, then opened its mouth to get more. The rest of the coffee went down the hatch.

Would it kill or cure? The young baboon closed its eyes, then began to twist and cry. The mother was making threatening sounds, other baboons were snarling, and Hal, looking about, could see nothing but row upon row of great yellow teeth crowding in on him.

Hal laid down the canteen. The small baboon suddenly squirmed out of its mother’s arms and lay face down on the ground, panting and wheezing. Hal watched every move in an agony of suspense. If the little beast died, he would die too.

Spasms shook the small body, at first in rapid order, then farther and farther apart. Finally the baby lay without movement.

Hal reached beneath and squeezed the baby’s belly, hard. Greenish-yellow curds came in a flood from the youngster’s mouth. Hal squeezed again and again, until nothing more came out.

Now, still on his knees, he waited. He had done all he knew how to do. It was not a hot day, but he found himself sweating at every pore. The strain had been greater than he realized.

The barking about him had risen to a steady roar. The mother took up her apparently dead baby and began to wail over it.

Suddenly there was a tightening of the small muscles and the little round eyes flickered open.

The barking of the baboons was suddenly hushed. Then there was low chattering, but there was no longer any anger in it. The apes began to amble off into the woods.

Hal, his heart bursting with relief, picked up his canteen and screwed on the top. For another ten minutes he waited as his small patient steadily recovered its strength. Now there were no baboons left in sight except these two, mother and child.

Hal rose slowly to his feet. The mother’s yellow-brown eyes looked up at him with an expression of gratitude that would warm the heart of any doctor. The baby was chattering and stretching out its small brown hand for the canteen.

Hal turned and started towards camp. The youngster raised its shrill voice, struggled out of its mother’s arms, and pursued the dangling canteen. Its mother gave it a good scolding, ordered it to come back, but when it did not she ambled slowly after it.

So it was that Hal walked into camp with two prize trophies captured only by love and a canteen.

The big baboon stopped when she saw the men. Hal took her hand. On the other side he took the hand of the youngster. He strolled in with his two companions as if he were in the habit of going for a walk with apes every day of his life.

The men stood speechless with surprise. Hal enjoyed the sensation he was causing. Now the men would congratulate him on the capture of these two fine specimens.

Then Roger found his tongue.

‘What a happy family!’ he cried. He opened the flap of the tent where his father lay. ‘Dad, you ought to see the three baboons. Papa, mamma, and the baby.’

Hal, grinning at his mischievous brother, took his new friends into the tent.

His father propped himself up on his elbow and carefully examined the big and little apes.

‘Perfect. Couldn’t be better. But Where’s the other? Roger said there were three.’

‘I’m the other,’ Hal said.

John Hunt laughed. ‘Roger should be careful how he calls his brother a baboon. That makes him one too. Not to mention me.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ Hal said, ‘I don’t mind being called a baboon. They’re pretty smart.’

He told the story of his adventure with the three hundred baboons.

‘You did well,’ his father said. ‘And so did they. They showed rare intelligence. They understood you wanted to help the youngster. Few other animals would have acted as wisely. Baboons can be extremely vicious, but they can also be very friendly when they know that they are not going to be harmed. I wonder what goes through a baboon’s mind when he sees a man. We look more like himself than any of the other animals, so perhaps he just thinks of us as fellow baboons, only a little bigger and a good deal more stupid, because we can’t speak his language and our eyesight and hearing and sense of smell are not as good as his. We can’t run as fast, and we can’t climb as well as he can. But he must know that there are some things we can do quite well. We can shoot fire out of the end of a stick, and perhaps we can even cure a sick baby.’

‘But I never dreamed,’ Hal said, ‘that an adult baboon would let me bring it into camp.’

That’s not surprising. Baboons often hang around a camp and even run in among the tents and snatch food. They climb up on cars and stick their hands in through the windows, demanding something to eat. They can sometimes make themselves a great nuisance. They get angry easily, but they become affectionate just as easily. If they are in danger from other animals, they may run to the nearest village for protection. Not long ago, when a gang of men were working in Rhodesia, they heard the roar of a lion and the scream of baboons. Then the baboon troop came running out of the bush and nervously squatted along the track as near to the men as they could get. They did not return to the bush until they were sure the lion had gone away.’ ‘Are they easy to tame?’

‘All apes are easily tamed. Of course, some learn more quickly than others. Some are clever, some stupid, just as some people are clever and some stupid. But they can be taught to do many more things than other animals, because they not only have brains, but hands. I wonder if we appreciate our hands. They are marvellous instruments and much of what we do would be impossible without them. Baboons use their hands very skilfully. I’ll give you an example. There’s a piece of rope. Tie one end of it round the big baboon’s neck and the other end to the cot.’

Hal did so. The mother baboon seemed surprised and not too well pleased. She pulled the rope tight and tried to break it. When this didn’t work, she sat down, ran her fingers round her neck until she found the knot, and began picking at it. It was a tight knot; yet within a minute she had picked it loose and thrown off the rope.