The Bafut Beagles

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Forest of Flying Mice

When I returned from the mountains to our Cross River base camp there was only one gap of importance in our collection. The gap was noticeable to me, for it was caused by the absence of a tiny animal which I wanted to catch more than practically any other creature in the Cameroons. The English name for this beast is the Pigmy Scaly-tail, while zoologists, in their usual flippant and familiar manner, call it idiurus kivuensis. When in England I had pored over drawings and museum skins of the beast, and since our arrival in Africa I had talked about it incessantly, until even the staff knew thatidiurus kivuensis was the name of a beef that I prize dbeyond all measure. I knew thatidiurus was a strictly nocturnal animal; it was, moreover, only the size of a small mouse, which made it unlikely that any of the hunters would know it. I was right, for they did not recognize the drawing I had. From the small amount of literature dealing with the species I had managed to glean the fact that they lived in colonies in hollow trees, preferring the less accessible portions of the forest. I explained this to the hunters, in the faint hope that it would spur them on to search for specimens, but it was no use; the African will not hunt for an animal he has never seen, for he considers it likely that it may not exist – to hunt for it would be a waste of time. I had had precisely the same trouble over the Hairy Frogs, so I realised that my tales of small-small rats that flew like birds from tree to tree were doomed from the start. One thing was very clear: if I w antedidiurus I would have to go out and hunt for it myself, and I should have to do so quickly, for our time was short. I decided to make the village of Eshobi my headquarters for theidiurus hunt; it was a day's march from base camp, in the depths of the forest, and I knew the inhabitants well, for I had stayed there on a previous visit to the Cameroons. Hunting for a creature the size of a mouse in the deep rain-forest that stretches for several hundred miles in all directions may sound like an improved version of the needle-in-the-haystack routine but it is this sort of thing that makes collecting so interesting. My chances of success were one in a thousand, but I set off cheerfully into the forest.

The Eshobi road can only be appreciated by someone with a saint-like predilection for mortifying the flesh. Most of it resembles an old dried watercourse, though it follows a route that no self-respecting river would take. It runs in a series of erratic zig-zags through the trees, occasionally tumbling down a steep slope into a valley, crossing a small stream and climbing up the opposite side. On the downward slope the rocks and stones which made up its surface were always loose, so that on occasions your descent was quicker than you anticipated. As the road started to climb up the opposite side of the valley, however, you would find that the rocks had increased considerably in size and were placed like a series of steps. This was a snare and a delusion, for each rock had been so cunningly placed that it was quite impossible to step from it to the next one. They were all thickly covered with a cloak of green moss, wild begonias, and ferns, so you could not tell, before jumping, exactly what shape your landing ground was going to be.

The track went on like this for some three miles, then we toiled up from the bottom of a deep valley and found that the forest floor was level and the path almost as smooth as a motor road. It wound and twisted its way through the giant trees, and here and there along its length there was a rent in the foliage above, which let through a shaft of sunlight. In these patches of sun, warming themselves after the night's dew, sat a host of butterflies. They rose and flew round us as we walked, dipping and fluttering and wheeling in a sun-drunken condition. There were tiny white ones like fragile chips of snow, great clumsy ones whose wings shone like burnished copper, and others decked out in blacks, greens, reds, and yellows. Once we had passed, they settled again on the sunlit path and sat there gaily, occasionally opening and closing their wings. This ballet of butterflies was always to be seen on the Eshobi path, and is moreover the only life you are likely to see, for the deep forest does not teem with dangerous game, as some books would have you believe.

We followed this path for about three hours, stopping at times so that the sweating carriers could lower their loads to the ground and have a rest. Presently the path curved, and as we rounded a corner the forest ended and we found ourselves walking up the main and only street of Eshobi. Dogs barked, chickens scuttled and squawked out of our way, and a small toddler rose from the dust where he had been playing and fled into the nearest hut, screaming his lungs out. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, we were surrounded by a milling crowd of humanity: men and boys, women of all ages, all grinning and clapping, pushing forward to shake me by the hand.

'Welcome, Masa, welcome!'

'You done come, Masa!'

'I see ya, Masa, welcome!'

'Eh… eahh! Masa, you done come back to Eshobi!'

I was escorted down the village street by this welcoming, chattering mob of humanity as though I were royalty. Someone rushed for a chair and I was seated in state with the entire village standing admiringly around me, beaming and ejaculating 'Welcome' at intervals, now and again clapping their hands, or cracking their knuckles, in an excess of delight.

I was still greeting old friends and inquiring after people's relatives and offspring when my carriers and the cook appeared. Then a long argument arose as to where I should stay, and at last the villagers decided that the only place fit for such a distinguished visitor was their newly built dance-hall. This was a very large, circular hut, the floor of which had been worn to the smoothness of planed wood through the trampling and shuffling of hundreds of feet. The band of drums, flutes, and rattles was hastily removed, the floor was swept, and I was installed.

After I had eaten and drunk, the village gathered round once again to hear what I had come for this time. I explained at great length that I had only come for a short visit, and that I wanted only one kind of creature, and I went on to describe idiurus. I showed them a drawing of the animal, and it was passed from hand to hand, and everyone shook their heads over it and said sorrowfully that they had never seen it. My heart sank. Then I picked out three hunters with whom I had worked before. I told them that they were to go to the forest immediately and to hunt for all the hollow trees they could find, and then to mark them. On the following day they would come and tell me what success they had met with, and guide me to the trees they had found. Then I asked if there was anyone present who could climb trees. A dozen or so hands went up. The volunteers were a very mixed crowd, and I eyed them doubtfully.

'You fit climb stick?' I asked.

'Yes sah, we fit,' came the instant and untruthful chorus.

I pointed to an enormous tree that grew at the edge of the village.

'You fit climb dat big stick?' I inquired.

Immediately the number of volunteers dwindled, until at last only one man still had his hand up.

'You fit climb dat big stick?' I repeated, thinking he had not heard.

'Yes, sah,' he said.

'For true?'

'Yes, sah, I fit climb um. I fit climb stick big pass dat one.'

'All right, then you go come for bush with me tomorrow, you hear.'

'Yes, sah,' said the man, grinning.

'Na what they de call you?'

'Peter, sah.'

'Right, you go come tomorrow for early-early morning time.'

The hunters and the other village inhabitants dispersed, and I unpacked my equipment and made ready for the next day. The entire village returned that' evening, silently and cautiously, and watched me having my bath. This they were able to do in comparative comfort, for the walls of the dance-hall had many windows and cracks in them. There must have been some fifty people watching me as I covered myself with soap, and sang lustily, but I did not become aware of the fact for quite some time. It did not worry me, for I am not unduly modest, and as long as my audience (half of which consisted of women) were silent and made no ribald remarks I was content that they should watch. However, Jacob arrived at that moment, and was shocked beyond belief at the disgusting inquisitiveness of the villagers. Seizing a stick, he dashed at them and drove them away in a rushing, screaming mob. He returned panting and full of righteous indignation. Soon afterwards I discovered that he had overlooked two of the crowd, for their earnest black faces were wedged in one of the windows. I called Jacob.

'Jacob,' I said, waving a soapy hand at the window, 'they done come back.'

He examined the faces at the window.

'No, sah,' he said seriously, 'dis one na my friends.'

Apparently I was not to be defiled by being watched by an indiscriminate mass of villagers, but any personal friends of Jacob's were in a different category. It was not until later that I learned that Jacob was something of a business man: after driving away the crowd, he had announced that those who would pay him a penny for the privilege of watching me bath would be allowed to return. He did quite a brisk trade among the smaller members of the village, many of whom had never seen a European, and who wanted to settle various bets among each other as to whether or not I was white all over.

Very early the next morning my hunters and my tree-climber appeared. The hunters, it transpired, had found and marked some thirty hollow trees in different parts of the forest. They were however dispersed over such a wide area that it would prove impossible to visit them all in one day, so I decided that we would visit the farthest ones first, and gradually work back towards the village.

The path we followed was a typical bush path, about eighteen inches wide, that coiled and twisted among the trees like a dying snake. At first it led up an extremely steep hillside, through massive boulders, each topped with a patch of ferns and moss and starred with the flowers of a tiny pink primrose-like plant. Here and there the great lianas coiled down from the trees, and lay across our path in strange shapes, curving and twisting like giant pythons. At the top of this steep incline the path flattened out, and ran across the level forest floor between the giant tree-trunks. The interior of the forest is cool, and the light is dim; it flickers through the dense fretwork of leaves, which gives it a curious underwater quality. The forest is not the tangled mass of undergrowth that you read about: it is composed of the enormous pillar-like trunks of the trees, set well apart, and interspersed with the thin undergrowth, the young saplings and low-growing plants that lurk in the half-light. We travelled onwards, following the faint trail, for some four miles, and then one of the hunters stopped and stuck his cutlass into the trunk of a great tree with a ringing 'chunk'.

'Dis na tree dat get hole for inside, sah,' he proclaimed.

At the base of the trunk was a slit, some two feet wide and three feet high; I bent and stuck my head inside, and then twisted round so that I could look up the tree. But if there was a top opening, it was hidden from me by some bend in the trunk, for no light filtered down from above. I sniffed vigorously, but all I could smell was rotting wood. The base of the tree yielded nothing but a few bat droppings and the dried husks of various insects. It did not look a particularly good tree, but I thought we might as well try smoking it out and see what it contained.

Smoking out a big forest tree, when it is only done occasionally, is a thrilling procedure. During my search for Idiurus the thrill rather wore off, but this was because we were forced to smoke so many trees a day, and a great proportion of them proved to have nothing inside. Smoking a tree is quite an art and requires a certain amount of practice before you can perfect it. First, having found your tree and made sure that it is really hollow all the way up, you have to discover whether there are any exit holes farther up the trunk, and if there are you have to send a man up to cover them with nets. Then you drape a net over the main hole at the base of the tree in such a way that it does not interfere with the smoking, and yet prevents anything from getting away. The important thing is to make sure that this net is secure: there is nothing quite so exasperating as to have it fall down and envelop you in its folds just as the creatures inside the tree are starting to come out.

With all your nets in position you have to deal with the problem of the fire: this, contrary to all proverbial expectations, has to be all smoke and no fire, unless you want your specimens roasted. First, a small pile of dry twigs is laid in the opening, soaked with kerosene and set alight. As soon as it is ablaze you lay a handful of green leaves on top, and keep replenishing them. The burning of these green leaves produces scarcely any flame, but vast quantities of pungent smoke, which is immediately sucked up into the hollow of the tree. Your next problem is to make sure that there is not too much smoke; for if you are not careful you can quite easily asphyxiate your specimens before they can rush out of the tree. The idea is to strike that happy medium between roasting and suffocation of your quarry. Once the fire has been lit and piled with green leaves, it generally takes about three minutes (depending on the size of the tree) before the smoke percolates to every part and the animals start to break cover.

We smoked our first tree, and all we got out of it was a large and indignant moth. We took down the nets, put out the fire, and continued on our way. The next tree that the hunters had marked was half a mile away, and when we reached it we went through the same procedure. This time it was slightly more exciting, for, although there were no Idiurus in the trunk, there was some life: the first thing to break cover was a small gecko, beautifully banded in chocolate and ash-grey. These little lizards are quite plentiful in the deep forest, and you generally find two or three in any hollow tree you smoke. Following hard on the gecko's tail came three creatures which looked, as they crawled hastily out of the smoke, like large brown sausages with a fringe of undulating legs along each side: they were giant millipedes, large, stupid, and completely harmless beasts that are very common all over the forest. The inside of hollow trees is their favourite abode, for their diet is rotten wood. This, it seemed, was the entire contents of the tree. We took down the nets, put out the fire, and went on. The next tree was completely empty, as were the three that followed it. The seventh tree produced a small colony of bats, all of which flew frantically out of a hole at the top as soon as Peter tried to climb the tree.

This laborious process of setting up the nets, smoking the tree, taking down the nets, and moving on to the next tree was repeated fifteen times that day, and towards evening we were sore and smarting from a thousand cuts and bruises, and our throats were rough from breathing in lungfuls of smoke. We were all in the deepest depths of depression, for not only had we caught no Idiurus, but we had caught nothing else of any value either. By the time we reached the last tree that we would have time to smoke before it got dark I was so tired that I really felt I did not care whether there were any Idiurus in its trunk or not. I squatted on the ground, smoking a cigarette and watching the hunters as they made the preparations. The tree was smoked and nothing whatsoever appeared from inside. The hunters looked at me.

'Take down the nets; we go back for Eshobi,' I said wearily.

Jacob was busily disentangling the net from the trunk, when he paused and peered at something that lay inside the tree. He bent, picked it up, and came towards me.

'Masa want dis kind of beef ?' he inquired diffidently.

I glanced up, and received a considerable shock, for there, dangling from his fingers by its long feathery tail, its eyes closed and its sides heaving, was an Idiurus. He deposited the mouse-sized creature in my cupped hands, and I peered at it: it was quite unconscious, apparently almost asphyxiated by the smoke.

'Quick, quick, Jacob!' I yelped, in an agony of fear, 'bring me small box for put um … No, no, not that one, a good one. Now put small leaf for inside… small leaf, you moron, not half a tree… There, that's right.' I placed the Idiurus reverently inside the box, and took another look at him. He lay there quite limp and unconscious, his chest heaving and his tiny pink paws twitching. He looked to me to be on the verge of death; frantically seizing a huge bunch of leaves I fanned him vigorously. A quarter of an hour of this peculiar form of artificial respiration and, to my delight, he started to recover. His eyes opened in a bleary fashion, he rolled on to his stomach and lay there looking miserable. I fanned him for a while longer, and then carefully closed the lid of the box.

While I had been trying to revive theldiurus, the hunters had been grouped round me in a silent and sorrowful circle; now that they saw the creature regain its faculties, they gave broad grins of delight. We hastily searched the inside of the tree to see if there were any more lying about, but we found nothing. This puzzled me considerably, forldiurus was supposed to live in large colonies. To find a solitary one, therefore, would be unusual. I sincerely hoped that the textbooks were not wrong; to catch some specimens from a colony of animals is infinitely easier than trying to track down and capture individuals. However, I could not stop to worry about it then; I wanted to get the precious creature back to the village and out of the small travelling box he was in. We packed up the nets and set off through the twilit forest as speedily as we could. I carried the box containing Idiurus in my cupped hands as delicately as if it contained eggs, and at intervals I would fan the creature through the wire gauze top.

When I was safely back in the village dance-hall, I prepared a larger cage for the precious beast, and then moved him into it. This was not so easy, for he had fully recovered from the smoke by now, and scuttled about with considerable speed. At last, without letting him escape, or getting myself bitten, I succeeded in manoeuvring him into the new cage, and then I placed my strongest light next to it in order to have a good look at him.

He was about the size of a common House Mouse, and very similar to it in general shape. The first thing that caught your attention was his tail: it was very long (almost twice as long as his body), and down each side of it grew a fringe of long, wavy hairs, so the whole tail looked like a bedraggled feather. His head was large, and rather domed, with small, pixie-pointed ears. His eyes were pitch black, small, and rather prominent. His rodent teeth, a pair of great bright orange incisors, protruded from his mouth in a gentle curve, so that from the side it gave him a most extraordinarily supercilious expression. Perhaps the most curious part about him was the 'flying' membrane, which stretched along each side of his body. This was a long, fine flap of skin, which was attached to his ankles, and to a long, slightly curved, cartilaginous shaft that grew out from his arm, just behind the elbow. When at rest, his membrane was curled and rucked along the side of his body like a curtain pelmet; when he launched himself into the air, however, the legs were stretched out straight, and the membrane thus drawn taut, so that it acted like the wings of a glider. Later I was to discover just how skilfulIdiurus could be in the air with this primitive gliding apparatus.

When I had gone to bed that night and switched off the light, I could hear my new specimen rustling and scuttling round his cage, and I imagined what a feast he was making on the variety of foods I had put in there for him. But when dawn came and I crawled sleepily out of bed to have a look, I discovered that he had not eaten anything. I was not unduly worried by this, for some creatures when newly caught refuse to eat until they have settled down in captivity. The length of time this takes varies not only with the species, but with the individual animal. I felt that some time during the day Idiurus would come down from the top of the cage, where he was clinging, and eat his fill.

When the hunters arrived we set out through the mist-whitened forest to a fresh series of trees. Refreshed by a night's sleep, and by our capture of anIdiurus the day before, we went about the laborious smoking process with a great deal more enthusiasm. But by midday we had investigated ten trees and found nothing. We had by this time reached a section of the forest where the trees were of enormous size, even for the West African forest. They stood well apart from each other, but even so their massive branches interlocked above. The trunks of these trees were, in most cases, at least fifteen feet in diameter. They had great buttress roots – growing out from the base of the trunks like supporting walls of a cathedral, each well over ten feet high where it joined the trunk, and with a space of a good-sized room between each flange. Some of them had wound round them massive, muscular-looking creepers as thick as my body. We made our way through the giant trunks, and came presently to a dip in the level forest floor, a small dell in which stood one of these enormous trees, more or less by itself. At the edge of the dell the hunters paused and pointed.

'Na dis big stick get hole too much, sah,' they said.

We approached the trunk of the tree, and I saw that there was a great arched rent in, the wood, between two of the flanges; this hole was about the same size and shape as a small church door. I paused at the entrance to the hole and looked up: the tree-trunk towered above me, shooting up towards the sky smooth and branchless for about two hundred feet. Not a stump, not a branch broke the smooth surface of that column of wood. I began to hope that there would be nothing inside the tree, for I could not see for the life of me how anyone was going to climb up to the top and put nets over the exit holes, if any, I walked into the hollow of the tree as I would walk into a room, and found there was plenty of space; the sunlight filtered gently in through the entrance, and gradually my eyes became accustomed to the dim light. I peered upwards, but a slight bend in the trunk prevented me seeing very far. I tested the sides of the tree and found them composed of rotten wood, soft and spongy. By kicking with my toes I found it was quite easy to make footholds, and I laboriously climbed up inside of the trunk until I was high enough to crane round the corner. The trunk stretched up as hollow as a factory chimney, and just as big. At the very summit of the tree there was a large exit hole, and through it a shaft of sunlight poured. Then, suddenly, I nearly released my rather precarious hold with excitement, for I saw that the top part of the trunk was literally a moving carpet of Mums. They slid about on the rotten wood as swiftly and silently as shadows, and when they were still they disappeared completely from sight, so perfectly did they match the background. I slithered to the ground and made my way out into the open. The hunters looked at me expectantly.

'Na beef for inside, Masa?' asked one. 'Yes. Na plenty beef for inside. You go look.' Chattering excitedly, they pushed and scrambled their way into the inside of the tree; some idea of its size may be gained from the fact that the three hunters, Peter, the tree-climber, and Jacob could all fit comfortably into its spacious interior. I could hear their ejaculations of astonishment as they saw the Idiurus, and sharp words being exchanged when someone (I suspected Jacob) trod on somebody else's face in his excitement. I walked slowly round the tree, searching the trunk for any foot or handholds on the bark which would enable Peter to climb to the top, but the bark was as smooth as a billiard ball. As far as I could see, the tree was unclimbable, and I damped the hunters' gaiety by pointing this out to them when they came out of the trunk. While we all sat on the ground and smoked and discussed the matter, Jacob prowled around the dell, scowling ferociously at the trees, and presently he came over to us and said that he thought he had found a way in which Peter could get to the top. We followed him across the dell to its extreme edge, and there he pointed to a tall, thin sapling whose top just reached one of the great branches of the main tree. Jacob suggested that Peter should shin up the sapling, get on to the branch, and then work his way along it until he reached the top of the hollow trunk. Peter examined the sapling suspiciously, and then said he would try. He spat on his hands, seked the trunk of the sapling, and swarmed aloft, using his almost prehensile toes to get extra grip upon the bark. When he reached the half-way mark, however, some seventy feet from the ground, his weight started to bend the sapling over like a bow, and before he had gone much further the trunk was giving ominous creakings. It was obvious that the tree was too slender to support the weight of my corpulent tree-climber, and he was forced to return to earth. Jacob, grinning with excitement, came strutting across to where I stood.

'Masa, I fit climb dat stick,' he said. 'I no be fat man like Peter.'

'Fat!' said Peter indignantly; 'who you de call fat, eh? I no be fat; dat stick no get power for hold man, dat's all.'

'You be fat,' said Jacob scornfully; 'all time you fill your belly with food, an now Masa want you to climb stick you no fit.'

'All right, all right,' I said hastily, 'you go try and climb, Jacob. But take care you no go fall, eh?'

'Yes, sah,' he said, and running to the sapling he flung himself on to the trunk and swarmed up it like a caterpillar.

Now Jacob weighed about half of what Peter weighed, so he was soon clinging to the very tip of the sapling, and the tree was still upright, though it swayed round and round in a gentle curve. Each time it passed the branch of the big tree, Jacob made a wild grab, but each time he missed. Presently he looked down.

'Masa, I no fit catch um,' he called,

'All right, come down,' I shouted back.

He descended rapidly to the ground, and I gave him the end of a long length of strong cord.

'You go tie dis for top, eh? Den, when you ready, we go pull dis small stick so it come fordis big one. Understand?'

'Yes, sah,' said Jacob gleefully, and scuttled up the sapling again.

When he reached the top, he fastened the rope round the sapling and shouted down that he was ready. We laid hold of the rope and pulled lustily; as we backed slowly across the clearing, digging our toes into the soft leaf-mould to gain a grip, the sapling bent slowly over until its tip touched the great branch. Quickly as a squirrel, Jacob had reached out, got a grip on the branch, and hauled himself across. We still held on to the sapling until he had pulled a piece of rope from out of his loin-cloth and tied the top of it to the branch on which he was now lying. When the sapling was tied, we released our hold on the rope gently. Jacob was now standing upright on the branch, holding on to the smaller growth that sprouted from it, and he slowly groped his way along towards the main trunk, walking warily, for the branch he was using as a road was thickly overgrown with orchids, creepers, and tree-ferns, an ideal habitat for a tree-snake. When he reached the place where the branch joined the tree, he squatted astride it, and lowered a long piece of string to us ; to the end of this we tied a bundle of nets and some small boxes in which to put any specimens he caught at the top. With these safely tied to his waist he moved round the tree to the hole, which was situated in the crutch where the great branches spread away from the trunk. Squatting down, he spread the net over the hole, arranged the boxes within easy reach, and then grinned down at us mischievously.

'All right, Masa, your hunter man 'e ready now,' he shouted.

'Hunterman!' muttered Peter indignantly; 'dis cook call himself hunter man… eh… aehh!'

We collected a mass of dry twigs and green leaves, and laid the fire in the huge chimney-like opening of the tree. We lit it and piled the green leaves on, after draping a net over the arched opening. The fire smouldered sullenly for a few minutes, and then the frail wisp of smoke grew stronger, and soon a great stream of grey smoke was pouring up the hollow shell of the tree. As the smoke rose up the trunk I became aware that there were other holes which we had not spotted, for at various points in the bark, some thirty feet above the ground, frail wisps of smoke started to appear, coiling out and fading into the air.

Jacob, perched precariously, was peering down into the inside of the trunk when the thick column of grey smoke swept up and enveloped him. We could hear him coughing and choking, and could see him moving round gingerly in the smoke, in an effort to find a more suitable spot to sit. It seemed to me, waiting excitedly, that the Idiurus took a tremendously long time to be affected by the smoke.

I was just wondering if perhaps they had all been knocked immediately unconscious before they could attempt to escape, when the first one broke cover. It scuttled out of the opening in the base of the tree, tried to launch itself into the air, and became immediately entangled in the nets. One of the hunters rushed forward to disentangle it, but before I could go and help him, the entire colony decided to vacate the tree in a body. Some twenty Idiurus appeared at the main opening, and leapt into the net. Up on the top of the tree, now hidden by billows of smoke, I could hear Jacob squeaking with excitement, and occasionally giving a roar of anguish as one of the Idiurus bit him. I discovered to my annoyance that there were two or three cracks in the trunk which we had overlooked, some thirty feet above the ground, and through these minute openings the Idiurus were swarming out into the open air. They scuttled about the bark, and seemed quite unperturbed by either the strong sunlight or our presence, for some of them came down to within six feet of the ground. They moved with remarkable rapidity over the surface of the wood, seeming to glide rather than run. Then an extra large and pungent cloud of smoke burst upwards and spread over them, and they decided to take to the air.

I have seen some extraordinary sights at one time and another, but the flight of the flying mice I shall remember until my dying day. The great tree was bound round with shifting columns of grey smoke that turned to the most ethereal blue where the great bars of sunlight stabbed through it. Into this the Idiurus launched themselves. They left the trunk of the tree without any apparent effort at jumping; one minute

they were clinging spread-eagled to the bark, the next they were in the air. Their tiny legs were stretched out, and the membranes along their sides were taut. They swooped and drifted through the tumbling clouds of smoke with all the assurance and skill of hawking swallows, twisting and banking with incredible skill and apparently little or no movement of the body. This was pure gliding, and what they achieved was astonishing. I saw one leave the trunk of the tree at a height of about thirty feet. He glided across the dell in a straight and steady swoop, and landed on a tree about a hundred and fifty feet away, losing little, if any, height in the process. Others left the trunk of the smoke-enveloped tree and glided round it in a series of diminishing spirals, to land on a portion of the trunk lower down. Some patrolled the tree in a series of S-shaped patterns, doubling back on their tracks with great smoothness and efficiency. Their wonderful ability in the air amazed me, for there was no breeze in the forest to set up the air currents I should have thought essential for such intricate manoeuvring.

I noticed that although a number of them had flown off into the forest the majority stayed on the main trunk, contenting themselves with taking short flights around it when the smoke got too dense. This gave me an idea; I put out the fire, and as the smoke gradually drifted and dispersed, theIdiurus that were on the tree all scuttled back inside. We gave them a few minutes to settle down, while I examined the ones we had caught. At the base of the tree we had captured eight females and four males; Jacob lowered his catch down from the smoke-filled heavens, which consisted of two more males and one female. With them were two of the most extraordinary bats I had ever seen, with golden-brown backs and bright lemon-yellow shirt-fronts, faces like pigs and long, pig-like ears twisted down over their noses.

When the Idiurus had all returned to the tree we re-lit the fire, and once again they all rushed out. This time, however, they had grown wiser, and the majority refused to come anywhere near the nets at the main opening. Jacob, however, had better luck at the top of the tree, and soon lowered down a bag of twenty specimens, which I thought was quite enough to be getting on with. We put out the fire, removed the nets, got Jacob down from his tree-top perch (not without some difficulty, for he was very eager to try to catch the rest of the colony), and then we set off through the forest to walk the four odd miles that separated us from the village. I carried the precious bag of squeaking and scrambling Idiurus carefully in my hands, occasionally stopping to undo the top and fan them, for I was not at all sure they were getting sufficient air through the sides of the fine linen bag.

We reached the village, tired and dirty, just after dark. I put theIdiurus in the largest cage I had, but I found, to my annoyance, that it was far too small for such a great number. Stupidly, I had only banked on getting two or threeIdiurus, if I got any at all, so had not brought a really large cage with me. I feared that if I left them in that confined space overnight the casualties in the morning would be heavy; there was only one thing to do, and that was to get the precious beasts back to the base camp as quickly as possible. I wrote a brief note to Smith, telling him that I had been successful and that I would be arriving some time about midnight with the animals, and would he please have a large cage ready for them. I sent this off at once, then I had a bath and some food. I reckoned that my letter would arrive at the camp about an hour before I did, which should give Smith plenty of time to improvise a cage.

About ten o'clock my little party started off along the Eshobi road. First walked Jacob carrying the lantern. Following him came a carrier with the box of Idiurus balanced on his woolly head. I was next in the row, and behind me was another carrier with my bed on his head. The Eshobi path is bad enough in broad daylight, but by night it is a death-trap. As a source of illumination the lantern was about as much use as an anaemic glow-worm; the light it gave was just sufficient to distort everything and to shroud rocks in deep shadow. Thus our progress was necessarily slow. Normally that walk would have taken us about two hours; that night it took us five. Most of the way I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, for the carrier with the Idiurus hopped and jumped among the rocks like a mountain goat, and every minute I expected to see him slip and my precious box of specimens go hurtling into a ravine. He became more and more daring as the path got worse, until I felt that it was only a matter of time before he fell.

'My friend,' I called, 'if you go drop my beef, we no go reach Mamfe together. I go bury you here.'

He took the hint and slowed his progress considerably.

Half-way across a small stream my shadow got in the way of the carrier behind me, he missed his footing and stumbled and deposited my bed and bedding into the water with a loud splash. He was very upset about it, although I pointed out that it was mainly my fault. We continued on our way, the carrier with the dripping load on his head ejaculating at intervals ' Eh 1 Sorry, sah,' in a loud and doleful voice.

The forest around us was full of tiny sounds: the faint cracking of twigs, an occasional call from a frightened bird, the steady throbbing cry of the cicadas on the tree-trunks, and now and again a shrill piping from a tree-frog. The streams we crossed were ice-cold and transparent, and they whispered and licked at the big boulders in a conspiratorial fashion. At one point Jacob, up ahead, let out a loud yelp and started to dance around wildly, swinging the lamp so that the shadows writhed and twisted among the tree-trunks.

'Na whatee, na whatee?' called the carriers.

'Na ant,' said Jacob, still twirling round, 'blurry ant too much.'

Not looking where he was going, he had trodden straight in a column of Driver ants crossing the path, a black stream of them two inches wide that poured from the undergrowth on one side of the path and into that on the other side like a steady, silent river of tar. As his foot came down on them, the whole line seemed to boil up suddenly and silently, and within a second the ants were swarming over the ground in a horde, spreading further and further round the scene of the attack, like an inkstain on the brown leaves. The carriers and I had to make a detour into the forest to avoid their ferocious attentions.

As we left the shelter of the forest and walked out into the first moon-silvered grassfield, it started to rain. At first it was a fine drifting drizzle, more like mist; then, without warning, the sky let down a seemingly solid deluge of water, that bent the grass flat and turned the path into a treacherous slide of red mud. Fearing that my precious box of specimens would get drenched, and the Idiurus die in consequence, I took off my coat and draped it over the cage on the carrier's head. It was not much protection, but it helped. We struggled on, up to our ankles in mud, until we came to the river which we had to ford. Crossing this took us, I suppose, roughly three minutes, but it was quite long enough, for the carrier with the Idiurus on his head stumbled and staggered over the rocky bed, while the current plucked and pushed at him, waiting an opportunity to catch him off balance. But we arrived intact on the opposite bank, and soon we saw the lights of the camp gleaming through the trees. Just as we got to the marquee the rain stopped.

The cage that Smith had prepared for the Idiurus was not really large enough, but I felt that the main thing was to get the creatures out of the box they were in as soon as possible, for it was dripping like a newly emerged submarine. Carefully we undid the door and stood watching with bated breath as the tiny animals scuttled into their new home. None appeared to have got wet, which relieved me, though one or two of them looked a bit the worse for wear after the journey.

'What do they eat?' inquired Smith, when we had gloated over them for five minutes.

'I haven't the faintest idea. The one I caught yesterday didn't eat anything, though God knows I gave him enough choice.'

'Um, I expect they'll eat when they settle down a bit.'

'Oh, yes, I think they will,' I said cheerfully, and I really believed it.

We filled the cage with every form of food and drink there was to be had in camp, until it looked like a native market.

Then we hung a sack over the front of the cage and left the Idiurus to eat. My bed having absorbed rain and river water like a sponge, I was forced to spend a most uncomfortable night dozing in an upright camp chair. I slept fitfully until dawn, when I got up and hobbled over to the Idiurus cage, lifted the sacking and peered inside.

On the floor, among the completely untouched food and drink, lay a dead Idiurus. The others clung to the top of the cage like a flock of bats and twittered suspiciously at me. I retrieved the dead specimen and carried it over to the table, where I subjected it to a careful dissection. The stomach, to my complete surprise, was crammed with the partially digested red husk of the palm-nut. This was the very last thing I expected to find, for the palm-nut is, in the Cameroons at any rate, a cultivated product, and does not grow wild in the forest. If the rest of the colony had been eating palm-nuts on the night before they were captured by us, it meant that they must have travelled some four miles to the nearest native farm, and then come down to within a few feet of the ground to feed. This was all very puzzling, but at any rate it gave me something to work on, so the next night the Idiurus cage was festooned like a Christmas tree with bunches of red palm-nuts, in addition to the other foods. We put the food in at dusk, and for the next three hours Smith and I carried on long conversations that had nothing to do with Idiurus, and with an effort we pretended not to hear the squeaks and rustlings that came from their cage. After we had eaten, however, the strain became too great, and we crept up to the cage and gently lifted a corner of the sacking.

The entire colony of Idiurus was down on the floor of the cage, and all of them were busily engaged in eating palm-nuts. They squatted on their haunches and held the nuts in their minute pink forepaws like squirrels, turning the nuts quickly as their teeth shredded off the scarlet rind. They stopped eating as we lifted the sacking and peered at us; one or two of the more timid ones dropped their nuts and fled to the top of the cage, but the majority decided that we were harmless and continued to eat. We lowered the sacking into place and executed a war dance round the marquee, uttering loud cries to indicate our pleasure, cries that awoke the monkeys and set them chattering a protest and brought the staff tumbling out of the kitchen to see what was the matter. When they heard the good news that the new beef was chopping at last, they grinned and cracked their knuckles with pleasure, for they took our work very much to heart. All day gloom had pervaded the camp because the new beef would not chop, but now everything was all right, so the staff returned to the kitchen, chattering and laughing.

But our joy was short-lived, for on going to the cage next morning we found twoIdturus dead. From then on our little colony diminished steadily, week by week. They would eat only palm-nuts, and, apparently, this was not enough for them. It was quite astonishing the variety of food we put in the cage, and which they refused – astonishing because even with the most finicky animal you will generally strike something it likes, if you offer it a wide enough choice of food. It appeared that the Murta were not going to be easy to get back to England.