Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

CHAPTER SIX BOA-HUNT

The boat thrust its way across the blue hummocks of waves and against the yellow and green dawn sky the carapace of Round Island loomed up, grim and forbidding.

A year had passed and we had come this time for four days, so we were well equipped for that most inhospitable spot. As well as the normal camping equipment, we had jerry cans of precious water and plenty of food. On an island where you might be trapped by sudden bad weather, it was essential that you took enough food and water to provide for this eventuality. However, the sheer weight and quantity of our supplies dictated that our camp should be somewhat near the landing rock, far enough away as to avoid heavy seas but not so far that it was impossible to lug our equipment there.

The weather was kind to us and the landing of our supplies and equipment was not as hazardous as it might have been, but the transporting of the stuff two or three hundred feet to the cleft in the rocks we had chosen for a camp site proved very exhausting, even though the sun was only just above the horizon well hidden by the island’s bulk. Cursing and sweating, we lugged the tent and foodstuffs, and heavy jerry cans of water, up through the rocks, thinking what fools we were to embark on such an enterprise. It was not the only time during our stay on the island that this thought occurred to us.

We had great difficulty in pitching the tent, for in that terrain the ground was either too hard to allow even a steel spike to be driven in, or else the tuff splintered and crumbled to dust. Eventually, exhausted, we had the tent pitched after a fashion. It was precariously tied to jagged projections of tuff which we hoped would hold in a high wind, but the tent gave us that much-needed commodity on Round Island — shade. Until one has spent all day under a blistering sun in a sun-baked terrain, one does not appreciate that even the shade cast by a toy umbrella can be as welcome as a deep, cool cave. Nor does one realise that even hot water to drink is better than no water at all.

Having seen us safely installed and made sure that we knew how to use the portable radio — our only link with the outside world — Wahab went back to the good ship Sphyrna which means Hammer-head shark. Soon they were a mere speck against the sea, heading far past Gunner’s Quoin along towards the blurred, blue, distant mountains of Mauritius. By the time we had finished rearranging the jerry cans, to our surprise we were very tired and so, after a meagre supper, for the heat, we found, took our appetite away, we went to bed just after sunset.

Next morning, we were up before dawn and made our way up to the old Screw pine or vacoa, known as the picnic tree, since it is the first shade-giving tree of consequence you come to on your climb up from the landing stage, and so it is there that everyone picnics. From here, we decided to make our way in a straight line, or as straight a line as is possible on Round Island, through the palm belt, northwards. We would work fifty feet or so apart, zig-zagging from Latania palm to Latania palm, in which, reputedly, the boas lived, and make a thorough search of each one. When it got too hot, we intended to drop down fifty feet and make our way back to camp. By this means, we hoped to have examined every likely palm in a hundred- foot strip for about half a mile’s length. To anyone who does not think this sounds like a very arduous undertaking, may I suggest they go out to Round Island and try it.

For the first hour, we searched assiduously. We were constantly having false alarms when we found placid and friendly Telfair’s skinks or bushbaby-eyed Gunther’s geckos in the axil of the palm leaves — a skink or gecko’s tail, when that is all you can see, looks very like a snake at first glance. It was nice to notice, however, that the Telfair’s population had increased by leaps and bounds since the previous year and, more important, the Gunther’s gecko population had increased as well. Everywhere there were fat babies in evidence.

We understood from everyone who had seen or captured one of the boas that the commoner of the two species — if you can call an estimated population of seventy-five common — could be found lurking in the axil of the leaves of the Latania palm. To those who had never seen a Latania, these seemed concise, straight-forward instructions, nothing could have been simpler. The Latanias, however, make life very difficult. The fronds grow on a thick, straight stalk that ends in something like a giant green fan. The stalk has all the resilience of cast iron and the fan part appears to be manufactured out of thick and indestructible green plastic. The tip of the fan is armed with tiny spikes, sharp enough to put out one’s eye. So looking for the Round Island boa, one had to approach a Latania, part the fronds and push one’s face into the interior of the palm until one could see the axils of the leaves, exerting considerable pressure on the leaves and hoping meanwhile that the stalk did not slip through one’s sweaty hand and allow the fan to lacerate or blind one.

The other species, the Burrowing boa, is fossorial and to find this one had to dig hopefully, like a pig in an oak wood, into the shallow area of earth trapped round the base of each palm. On the face of it, this too should have proved easy but it was not, for the dead leaves of the Latania, though they turned brown and fell earthwards, still remained attached by their stalks to the parent tree; thus they formed a sort of resilient brown tent of fan-shaped leaves round the base of each tree, and these had to be moved aside before one could grub in the earth they concealed. To say that this was thirst- and sweat-provoking work was an understatement; you were bathed in perspiration and yet your body glowed with heat, and your tongue appeared to have taken up residence in a cave composed of very old and very dry chamois leather. The tuff grew so hot that you could have coddled an egg on it. From above, the heat hit you like a physical blow, while it rebounded from the tuff, and hit you in the face with a blast like opening a foundry oven. We lost more moisture in sweat walking a hundred yards than one would have thought the body could contain.

The exhausting part was that you were never on the level. Either you were straining your muscles to climb uphill, or straining them against the downward slope. Even when you walked in a straight line, you felt you were walking with one leg shorter than the other. We searched for two hours and then sat down to have a much-needed drink and an orange apiece. We found, as we got more used to hunting on Round Island, that oranges were better value to take with you than the heavy bottles of water, for they provided you with moisture as well as food, and left your clogged mouth feeling clean.

By now, the sun had crept up and peered over the carapace of the island, glowering down at us like the monstrous red-hot eye of some giant dragon. We knew that it would soon be really too hot to continue our search. We moved downhill some fifty feet and started back to camp, searching as we went. I parted the leaves of a Latania for what seemed like the thousandth time, and saw the tail of what I thought was a Telfair’s skink. I was about to move along to the next palm, when I thought I had better make sure it was a Telfair’s. I had a brief struggle with the leaves and shifted my vantage point.

It was not a Telfair’s but a fully-grown and very beautiful Round Island boa, which lay coiled around the Latania stems where the bases formed a sort of cup round the palm’s trunk. From my viewpoint, I could see him lying there, languid and unafraid. The only portion of him I could catch hold of was the extreme end of his tail. This struck me as being a bad policy from every point of view. For one thing the tail was slender and, although unlikely to snap, could bruise more easily than the rest of his length. For another, if I grabbed him by the tail, he might bite me. This was no problem as far as I was concerned, as his mouth was tiny, but I did not want to risk breaking off some of his fish-bone-like teeth in my hand, which could then easily lead to his getting canker of the mouth. He was too valuable to risk anything like that. So, rather than move my position and risk disturbing him and maybe losing my find I called John who was upside down, like a dabbling duck, in the depths of the Latania farther down the hill.

‘John,’ I shouted, ‘I’ve got a snake here, come and give a hand.’ He emerged, scratched, tousled and perspiring, his spectacles misted over, from the depths of his palm. He wiped his brow.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m too busy with the one hundred and fifty I’ve got here.’

‘Don’t be a nincompoop,’ I said. ‘I’m not joking.’

‘Seriously?’ said John, and then he ran towards me, stumbling and slipping on the tuff, and arrived panting.

‘Go round to the other side of the palm and grab him,’ I instructed. ‘That’s where his head is. And don’t let him bite you, I don’t want him to get canker of the mouth.’

With me acting as the rear guard, John parted the fronds, found out where the snake’s head was deployed, and then simply inserted a long arm, picked him up by the back of the neck, gently disentangled him from the Latania leaves, and drew him out.

He was about three feet long; basically a pale olive-green colour, with a speckling of dull yellow towards the tail. The head was long and narrow, almost leaf-shaped. Altogether, he did not look very boa-like.

To say that we were exuberant was an understatement. To have captured one of the rarest snakes in the world in such difficult terrain, after only a two-hour search, was incredible; to have captured it, as it were, with its full co-operation, was even more extraordinary. We went back to our hunting with redoubled zeal. However, the sun rose higher and higher, and grew hotter and hotter, and the Latanias seemed tougher and tougher to wrestle with, so eventually we went back to camp and the luxury of fresh coconut milk, water melon, and camp beds that bucked like unbroken horses on the uneven terrain. In what we referred to, with some sarcasm, as the cool of the evening, when the temperature had dropped to a mere 85°F and you could sit on the exposed tuff without burning yourself, we did another sweep through the Latanias, but with no success. That night, it rained and the water poured down the sheets of tuff and through our tent so that, lying in our camp beds, it felt as if one were afloat on one of the less salubrious canals of Venice.

We were up before sunrise and just as the sky was turning greeny gold, we made our first sweep through the palm belt. I was much cooler that morning, for there had been a stiff breeze blowing, flecking the blue sea with white petals of foam and drawing great, flat flotillas of cloud across the sky which frequently masked the sun and gave us a few minutes’ respite. We searched for three hours but although we saw lots of lizards, there were no snakes. When we stopped for a rest and an orange, John expounded a theory.

‘You know, there is plenty for them to eat,’ he said.

‘I’ve seen no end of green geckos and baby skinks, which make ideal food.’

‘There is certainly no shortage of food,’ I said.

‘Well, why are they so rare?’ persisted John.

‘Probably because they find it so hard to find each other in these damn Latanias,’ I said bitterly.

‘I think it’s because they are preyed upon when they are young.’

‘Preyed upon? What by?’

‘Telfair’s skinks. I’ve been watching the big ones and you know they eat anything from chewing gum to orange peel. Well,

I saw a Telfair’s just now, eating quite a large Bojeri skink. The snakes can’t be all that big when they are born. A fully-grown Telfair’s is a formidable beast, and they are everywhere.’ ‘You’re probably right, it hadn’t occurred to me.’

‘In fact,’ said John, ‘to help the snake in its wild state, it might be necessary to catch up four or five hundred Telfair’s and transport them to Gunner’s Quoin or Flat Island.’

‘Now you are going too far,’ I said, hopefully burying my orange pips in some loose tuff. ‘You know there are two things that make all conservationists as hysterical as maiden aunts when they are suggested. One is captive breeding and the other is translocation of species.’

‘Well, I think it would help the boa,’ said John, stubbornly.

‘It probably would. When we get our teeth really stuck into the Round Island problem, we’ll suggest it. Meanwhile, let’s have another tilt at these Latanias.’

Half an hour later, John’s theory had some evidence to strengthen it. He had called me over to help him with a group of Latanias which were growing tightly together and which he found he was unable to explore single-handed. While I held the fresh leaves back, he grubbed around at the base of the palm among the dead fronds. He uprooted one of these, over which the rains had plastered a layer of tuff, and, suddenly, out fell what at first sight I took to be a large centipede, which lay, writhing, on the ground. Next moment, I realised it was a bright brick-red and yellow baby snake, some twelve inches long and as thick as a pencil. It was its astonishing colour that had me think it was a centipede, for I was unprepared for the juvenile colouration being so very vivid in contrast to the sober adult. We gathered up the baby in triumph, placed it tenderly in a cloth bag, and stumbled back to camp with it.

‘There you are,’ panted John, as we slipped and slithered over Round Island’s back. ‘This little chap would have been helpless against the big Telfairs’s, and it would have just made a nice meal for one of them too.’

That night, it not only rained heavily but the wind blew so hard that we were in danger of losing the tent altogether. It was a most uncomfortable night, and we were glad when the dawn came. We did our normal, routine hunt through the Latanias and returned at eleven o’clock. The sea had become considerably rougher and the sky was clouded over. The wind was coming in sudden vehement gusts, and it looked as if we were in for more rain before the day was out. During the course of lunch, I happened to stick my head outside the tent when I saw, to my astonishment, the good ship Sphyrna gallantly ploughing her way towards us, making heavy weather, for the sea was now quite rough. We speculated on what curious mission she could be involved in such inclement weather; then it gradually became obvious that she was heading for Round Island. We wondered what vital supplies Wahab could be sending us. It never occurred to us that it might be the weather itself that was the reason for the boat’s hasty visit. When she got close to the landing rock and had put her anchor down, the captain hailed us.

‘Cyclone,’ he shouted. ‘Force two warning in Mauritius. I’ve come to take you back, you must hurry.’

The idea of being marooned for an indeterminate period on Round Island while it underwent a cyclone of whatever magnitude was so unappealing that we hardly needed the captain’s exhortation to hurry. Never was a camp broken and packed with such speed. Getting everything into the boat and then from the boat into the Sphyrna was an extremely hazardous experience, but eventually we, our gear and our two precious snakes were being buffeted and tossed by the waves on our way to Mauritius.

The cyclone warning lasted for a week — a week of oppressive weather, rain and rough seas. To cap it all, I had started to feel unwell on Round Island and this now developed into one of those amoeboid infections, which are so irritating and debilitating. It seemed as though our chance of returning to the island to get the required number of snakes for our breeding programme was non-existent; and we had not even collected the other lizard we needed. This meant that we would have to leave the snakes with Wahab to be taken back to Round Island and released. They were far too rare to risk making a mistake with, and the youngster could not be sexed with certainty with the facilities we had in Mauritius. It would be criminal to take them back to Jersey only to find that both snakes were the same sex. I discussed this at length with Wahab, and he said that the long range forecast was that the cyclone was going to miss us after all, and we were moving into a period of smooth weather. Would it not be possible for you to stay a little longer?’

I had, to my intense annoyance, since it had taken over seven years to arrange, just had to cancel a trip to Assam, which I was to have undertaken immediately on my return to Jersey, since the doctors in Mauritius advised against it. This gave me a little lee-way but even if we stayed, I decided, I was feeling too lousy to undertake the boat trip and the subsequent humping of heavy equipment round the island.

‘Could we,’ I asked, hopefully, ‘get the Government helicopter? First, it would make the whole journey there and back infinitely easier and, secondly, I have always longed to do a trip in a helicopter.’

Wahab pursed his lips and said it would be difficult, but he would try.

A few days later, with an air of smug satisfaction, he phoned me up to say that the Prime Minister had given permission for us to have the helicopter. We could go as soon as the weather was right. For several days, we had to hang about while two cyclones, one with the endearing name of ‘Fifi’, whirled about the Indian Ocean, making up their minds whether or not to pay Mauritius a visit. To our great relief, they decided not to, and the weather forecast being propitious, we got the all-clear to embark on the following Monday. As it coincided with a series of public holidays, Wahab decided to join us and bring with him a stalwart volunteer from the Forestry Department to help us in our task.

We were to pick up the helicopter in Port Louis and thence to fly to a football field in the north of the island, where the lorry, with our supplies, would meet us. From there, it was only a quarter of an hour’s flight to Round Island. We duly assembled at the Police Barracks in Port Louis and, with much solemnity, the helicopter was wheeled out and opened up like a bubble car. We clambered in. Wahab and John sat behind, while I was in front with the jovial Indian pilot and his co-pilot. It was, I decided, rather like being in a goldfish bowl and, having no head for heights, I wondered what it was going to feel like when we took off.

‘My God, what a hot today,’ said the pilot, fastening his seat belt and giving a fair imitation of Peter Sellers. What a bloody hot.’

‘It will be hotter on Round Island,’ I said.

'Yes, my God,’ said the pilot, ‘there you will be roasting. What a hot.’

The propeller whirled round faster and faster, and suddenly we rose vertically like a lift, remained stationary for a moment and then zoomed off seventy feet above the roofs of Port Louis. The sensation was incredible; one realised, much more vividly even than in a small plane, what it was like to be a hawk or dragonfly, to be able to rise and descend vertically, to hover and swoop. As we sped one hundred feet above the squares of sugar cane, each with its central pile of huge, brown rocks that had been ploughed up, one had the impression that one was flying over a vast, green chess board, covered with monstrous elephant droppings. Along the road, the Flamboyant trees glowed like heaps of live coals, and the roads themselves were dotted, like an Impressionist painting, with little specks of colour, which were the women, in their multi-coloured saris, going to market.

Presently we banked steeply — a not altogether pleasant sensation in a goldfish bowl, for you felt you were bound to crash through the glass and fall out — and came in to land on the football pitch, as lightly as a dandelion clock. Here, the lorry, piled high with our tent, foodstuffs and sixteen huge jerry cans of water, was waiting for us, accompanied by Wahab’s side-kick from the Forestry Department, a young man called Zozo. He was a slender youth of Asian descent, with a wide and engaging grin, and a nose so retrousse that facing him was like looking up the barrels of a shotgun. His clothes were khaki drill, and he was wearing a huge pair of sunglasses and a large khaki solar topee — Forestry Department issue — of the type that used to be favoured by Stanley and Livingstone. He seemed an enchanting young man, terribly excited at the adventure. He confided to me that not only had he never left Mauritius before, but that he had never flown before, still less flown in a helicopter. To have three such extraordinary things happen in one day rendered him almost speechless.

We loaded our stuff into the helicopter, which had to make two trips because of the weight of the water, and took off. We swept low over the goalposts and the crowd of children, assembled to watch us, scattered and ran, laughing and screaming. Then

we roared up over the shaggy-headed palms and zoomed out over the emerald waters of the lagoon, over the foam flower bed of the reef, and then across the deep blue waters towards Round Island, that crouched, like a desiccated green and brown tortoise, on the horizon, fourteen miles away.

On the maps of Round Island, there are two areas in the south, marked ‘Big Helipad’ and ‘Small Helipad’. With these grandiose titles, you might imagine a smooth area of tarmac, wind socks, perhaps, and even a Customs and Immigration shed and a Tourist Bureau. Fortunately no such amenities exist. The helipads are simply two flattened areas, one larger than the other, which are, indeed, the only flattened areas of any size on the island. Here, the wind and the rain had beaten, broken and smoothed the tuff into patches which, if not exactly smooth as a ballroom, were a reasonably level sort of moonscape. We landed on the smaller one, the whirling of our propellers sending the White- and Red-tailed tropic birds and the dark, rather sinister, Trinidad petrels, whirling and calling around us. The petrels had the most peculiar and ethereal cry, that started off with a series of croaks and ended with a bubbling song of great beauty and wildness, not the sort of noise you would expect from a drab seabird. In contrast, the fairy-like beauty of the tropic birds did not lead you to expect a noise like somebody having difficulty in getting a champagne cork out of a bottle.

Struggling and sweating, we manhandled our tent and supplies across the helipad and down the valley that ran alongside it, while the tropic birds dive-bombed us like white icicles, creaking their strange cries, and the petrels, effortlessly gliding two feet above the ground, accompanied us like highly polished sheep dogs guarding a flock of unruly and irresponsible sheep.

The camp site we chose was on the banks of the eroded, wind- and water-sculptured gully which ran, like a miniature Grand Canyon, towards the sea. Here, the tuff lay in great, grey sheets and between these, there were areas where it had been scratched and powdered into a form of soil by a combination of rabbits and seabirds. Over this grew a green layer of small, fleshy-stemmed plants which, at first glance, looked not unlike watercress. Fortunately it was not eaten by the rabbits, so it formed a protective covering for those precious areas of soil. The patches looked like a series of incongruous green meadows with a scattering of palms in the harsh, eroded landscape. They seemed innocent enough and devoid of life, except for insects and a few prowling skinks, but as soon as darkness fell, the whole picture changed.

It took us until dark to get the camp set up and functioning properly. As the green twilight faded and the sky turned velvety black, awash with stars, as if at a given signal there arose the most extraordinary noise from the bowels of the earth. It started softly, almost tunefully, a sound like a distant pack of wolves, howling mournfully across some remote, snowbound landscape. Then, as more and more voices joined the chorus, it became a gigantic, mad mass being celebrated underground in some Bedlamite cathedral. You could hear the lunatic cries of the priests and the wild responses from the congregation. This lasted for about half an hour, the sounds rising and falling, the ground throbbing with the noise, and then, as suddenly as if the earth had burst open and released all the damned souls from some Gustave Doré subterranean hell, out of the holes concealed by the green meadows, mewing and honking and moaning, the baby Shearwaters burst forth.

They appeared in hundreds, as if newly arisen from the grave, and squatted and fluttered around our camp, providing such a cacophony of sound that we could hardly hear each other speak. Not content with this, the babies, being of limited intelligence, decided that our tent was a sort of superior nest burrow, designed for their special benefit. Squaking and moaning, they fought their way in through the openings and flapped over and under our camp beds, defecating with great freedom, and if handled without tact, regurgitating a fishy, smelly oil all over us.

‘Really, this is too much,’ I said, as I evicted the twentieth baby from my bed, ‘I know I am supposed to be an animal lover, but there are limits.’

We can lace up the ends of the tent, Gerry,’ said Wahab, ‘but it will be very hot.’

Well, I think I’d rather suffocate than share my bed with this avian cohort. Already my bed looks as though it were one of the more productive guano islands of Peru,’ I said bitterly, rescuing a baby Shearwater which had just fallen into my soup.

So we laced up the ends of the tent. Beyond sending the temperature up into the hundreds, this had little effect, for the babies, undaunted, started burrowing under the sides of the tent. Every time they successfully did this, we had to unlace the ends to throw them out. In the end, we had to lay our jerry cans of water along the edges of the tent to repel the determined invaders. Defeated at last, the babies sat outside the tent and gave us the benefit of their singing throughout the night.

‘Waaah, waaah, wooo,’ one crowd would shout, and the others would reply, Waaah, waaah, wooee,’ while a rival group sang ‘Ooo, ooh, ooh, OOOHH, ooh,’ and were backed up by a chorus Waah, waah, waah, ooeeee, waah, waah.’

This lasted until dawn. The only thing to break the monotony was when the parent birds flew in with food, and the strange cries of the babies were interspersed with peculiar and not very attractive sounds like a bath, full of liquid manure, running out. This was the parent birds regurgitating semi-digested fish. The tent began to smell like the interior of a whaling ship after a rich haul.

Towards dawn, when, through sheer exhaustion, we were falling into a fitful sleep in spite of the noise, the babies discovered a new virtue of the tent. Its sides were designed with beautifully arranged canvas slopes. The baby birds took it in turn to fly up on to the ridge of the tent and then to slide down the side, their claws making a noise like ripping calico on the canvas, while their brethren sat in a circle round about and made admiring cries, such as ‘Caaw, cooRR, COORR,’ and ‘Oooh, Coorr, Coorr.’ On mature reflection, I decided that this was the most uncomfortable night I had ever spent in my life.

The following morning, just before dawn, we awoke from our inadequate doze and staggered out from the tent, tripping and

stumbling to have a wash through the hordes of Shearwaters which still sat, honking, outside their burrows. The sky was pink, orange and green, with a handful of dark clouds scattered carelessly along the horizon. The sea was calm, a deep, cobalt blue. Over my head, the palms rustled their leaves with a sound like spectral rain, their fronds stamped black against the sky. Resting among them in an abandoned position on her back, was a fragile sickle moon, white as a tropic bird. The sky was freckled with the shapes of Shearwaters, flying and calling in a dawn chorus, and everywhere the dusky babies shuffled through the tobacco plants and scuttled into their holes.

Having had breakfast, we set off to the palm belt and here, we instructed Zozo in the art of snake catching. He asked, with a fine insouciance, whether he was actually to catch the snakes or just to find them. We said it would be fine if he just found them. So, pushing his solar topee on to the back of his head, and settling his sunglasses more firmly on his Pekinese nose, he set off. Within half an hour, to our astonishment, he called out that he had found a snake. We bore down on the Latania by which he was standing. Secretly, I felt sure that what he had discovered would be the tail of a Telfair’s skink, but there, in the leaves, lying placidly, without fear, was a semi-grown boa. It had a fine, slender head and its colouring — in contrast to the greenish shade of the adult and the vivid, fox-red and yellow of the baby — was dark olive with a lacy network of dull yellow patches on its neck, parts of its back and the base of its tail. We congratulated Zozo on his brilliance until his grin of delight almost encircled his head; and so we continued on our way, exhilarated that we had met with such success so swiftly.

During our search for snakes, we, of course, still pursued the Gunther’s geckos for we wanted some more young females, as well as the Bojeri and Telfair’s skinks. Zozo, flushed with enthusiasm at his prowess as a snake hunter, got so daring that he actually caught several of the agile, glittering Bojeri skinks and then confessed to me, having glanced round to make sure that he was not overheard, that before this expedition, he had actually been afraid of lizards. We searched on until the sun grew too hot for comfort, and then made our way back to camp. We were well satisfied, for we had eight Bojeri skinks, six young Telfair’s skinks and three half-grown Gunther’s geckos, as well as the snake. Later in the afternoon, when a little of the heat had gone out of the sun, we made another sortie through the Latania belt, but with no success. That night, we once again had a cacophonous company of the Shearwaters and slept fitfully.

Next morning, we decided to leave extra early, to make our way to one of the highest points of the island and then work downwards towards the sea. Climbing upwards, even that early in the morning, was an exhausting process and by the time we reached the highest vantage point, we were bathed in sweat.

Here one saw how eroded the island was, with the cliffsides of tuff falling sheer as a ski-slope down to the sea, grooved and veined into channels by the rain. Here and there lay boulders that had been unearthed from the tuff and tumbled into gullies in toppling piles, awaiting the next deluge to take them farther down towards their final resting place in the sea. At the summit the great sheets of tuff were hard enough, but we had had a little rain in the night and in places it had dissolved into something like the consistency of a slab of chocolate in a schoolboy’s pocket, sticky, slippery and full of foreign bodies. On these slopes, you had to move with extreme care for if you lost your footing, you would roll unhindered three or four hundred feet, until you crashed into the palm belt, or else, if you fell in a gully, nothing would impede your descent until you hit the sea some seven hundred feet below.

Gazing down at these steep slopes of tuff gouged into massive wrinkles by the rain, with what palms there were leaning over precariously in their efforts to retain their grip, and below, a carpet of tuff silt lying on the bottom of the sea, you realised forcibly that here was a unique, miniature world that had, by a miracle of evolution, come into being and was now being allowed to bleed to death. The twisted sheets and shelves of tuff were being drained away, while over them sprawled the trailing, inadequate tourniquets of the convolvulus plants, with their purple funeral flowers. While everyone argued over what to do about the rabbits, and got no forrader, this unique speck of land was diminishing day by day. It seemed to sum up in miniature what we were doing to the whole planet, with millions of species being bled to death for want of a little, so little, medicare.

For an hour or so, we made our way slowly seawards, zig-zagging down the steep sides, investigating the little copses of Latanias that huddled grimly wherever they could get a roothold. Even at this height, I found that these miniature woodlands of palms contained a myriad of creatures. There were cockroaches and crickets; beetles, flies, a strange larva wearing a case that looked like an ice-cream cone; stick insects, spiders; and on every exposed area a billion tiny mites, scarlet as huntsmen, rushing, apparently aimlessly, about the tuff. In holes under the dead Latania leaves curious purple-coloured land crabs with pale, cream-coloured claws which they waved to and fro, looking like bank clerks who had spent their lives endlessly counting other people’s money and now could not stop the reflex action of their hands. All around the Latanias lived the Telfair’s skinks, and you only had to sit down for a minute for them to come clustering round you with the curiosity of children, trying to eat your shoe laces or your

trouser bottoms, and devouring everything else that you threw down, from orange peel to paper. Here, in the grassy areas around the Latanias, lived the Bojeri, moving like quicksilver in the sun on their perpetual hunt for food, and on the Latanias themselves lived Vinson’s geckos, green as grass, with blue and scarlet heads.

I paused in the shade of a moderate-sized Latania to have an orange, and was treated to a very curious sight, which showed me how many Vinson’s geckos a palm could support, and also what a predatory nature the Telfair’s skink possessed.

I was sitting there, joyfully sucking my orange, when I heard a pattering noise on the leaves above me. I thought we were having a shower of rain, and it was raindrops I could hear on the stiff, cardboard-like fronds. The pattering went on, however, and I suddenly realised that I could not see any rain, nor could I feel any. Curious, I looked up at the fronds above me. Each great, green hand was made transparent by the sun and so I could see, scuttling and jumping, a shadow play of Vinson’s geckos. Sometimes, one would stop for a moment and peer round the edge of the frond, before rushing farther up the palm. There were easily forty of them, from fully adult specimens to fragile babies about an inch long. They leapt from frond to frond with the agility of frogs; they were all moving upwards and it was obvious that something was causing them to panic. It was an extremely pretty sight to see their little bodies in black silhouette, running and jumping across the screen of green leaves.

I peered into the depths of the Latania to see what was alarming this host of jewel-like geckos, hoping it might be a snake. There, making his way laboriously but methodically up the stem, was a large Telfair’s skink. Every now and then, he would pause in his climb and glance up, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth. Up above, the panic-stricken geckos leapt and scuttled and peered round the fronds, their shiny black eyes looking round and horror-stricken in their little coloured faces. The Telfair’s slow, ponderous approach had something rather prehistoric about it. After watching for a bit I decided that he had terrified the fairy-like Vinson’s quite enough, so I caught him and transported him some fifty feet away from the Latania. When I came back to finish my orange, all the geckos had settled down to bask in the sun and resume their small lives.

Half an hour later, a triumphant shout from Wahab informed us that we had captured our fourth snake. Again, it was a juvenile, but somewhat bigger than Zozo’s. We made our way back to camp, well satisfied, and even the tintinnabulation of the Shearwaters that night could not damp our enthusiasm.

Next morning, we had only time for one more search, since the helicopter was due to arrive at noon. We went off into the palm grove but met with no success, and so returned to the gruelling task of humping all our equipment down the valley and on to the heat-shimmered helipad. We left the tent up for shade and kept three jerry cans of water intact, using the others to give ourselves a much-needed bath.

At a quarter past twelve, Wahab began to get restive. At twelve-thirty, he started pacing up and down outside the tent. When he organised something, he liked it to run smoothly. At half past one, we made some tea and congratulated ourselves on not having used up all the water. At half past two, Wahab took Zozo outside. They went up on to the blistering helipad and stood there, gazing hopefully at the dim, heat-haze-blurred mountains of Mauritius.

Wahab’s very annoyed,’ said John. ‘He likes things to be done properly.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but what can we do? We could radio, I suppose.’

When Wahab came back, I suggested it. He thought for a bit, and then we took the tiny radio transmitter up on to the helipad and stood in a perspiring circle, trying to make it work.

‘It’s no good,’ said John, at last, ‘it’s as dead as the Dodo.’

Wahab gave him a reproachful look. We trooped back to the tent, leaving the defunct radio on the helipad.

‘Zozo looks really worried,’ said John, in a whisper.

‘Well, he has only recently been married,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s a bit early to find himself turned into a Robinson Zozo.’

‘I think he really imagines we’ve had it,’ said John.

Zozo was sitting, moodily, under a palm tree nearby. I decided to lighten his gloom.

‘Zozo,’ I called.

^Yes, Mr Gerry?’ he said, peering at me from under the brim of his solar topee, which made him look ridiculously like a green mushroom.

‘It seems as if the helicopter is not coming to rescue us.’

‘Yes, Mr Gerry,’ he agreed, soulfully.

‘Well,’ I said, kindly, ‘I wanted you to know that, by an overwhelming vote, we have decided to eat you first when the food runs out.’

For a moment, he stared at me, wide-eyed; then he realised it was a joke and grinned. Even so, it did little to relieve his gloom. Wahab prepared to go up on to the helipad for the twentieth time.

‘I can’t understand where they are,’ said Wahab, irritably.

‘Look,’ I said, soothingly, ‘why don’t we have a cup of tea? Zozo, put the kettle on.’

Zozo, glad to have something to do, filled the kettle.

‘You’ll see,’ I said to Wahab, ‘the moment that kettle starts to boil, the helicopter will arrive.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Wahab.

White man’s magic,’ I said solemnly, and he grinned at me.

Strangely enough, just as the kettle started to boil, we heard the drone of the approaching helicopter. Within half an hour, we had packed everything in and, in an indignant snowstorm of tropic birds, took off with our precious cargo of snakes and lizards lying in their cloth bags on our laps.

At my request, the pilot circled the island at low level. We saw its great humpback, bare and desiccated, and the edge of its crater, as if some giant sea monster had taken a bite out of its side, and the pathetic, thin belt of palms and Latanias running like a pale green half-moon round one side, and over it looming the great sheets of eroded tuff. It seemed incredible that even now, when the island was practically dead, it should provide a home for such a variety of creatures and plants, and even more incredible that six of them should be found nowhere else in the world.

As we rose higher and higher, and the island dwindled against the turquoise sea, I became determined that we must do everything we could to save it.