The Bafut Beagles

CHAPTER SIX Snakes and Shillings

The Fon's speech at the grass-gathering ceremony produced the most astonishing and immediate results. The next afternoon I was endeavouring to dissipate the effects of the Fon's party, and the subsequent frog hunt, by lying down for a couple of hours and catching up on some sleep. When I awoke, I decided that some tea would help to restore me to a more amiable frame of mind, so I staggered off the bed and made my way to the door, intending to shout my instructions down to the kitchen from the veranda. I opened the door and then stopped dead, wondering if I was dreaming, for the whole veranda was literally covered with a weird assortment of sacks, palm-leaf baskets, and calabashes, all of which shook and quivered gently, while leaning up against the wall were four or five long bamboos to the ends of which were tied writhing and infuriated snakes. The veranda looked more like a native market than anything else. At the top of the steps squatted Jacob, scowling at me disapprovingly.

'Masa wake up?' he said mournfully, 'why Masa wake up?'

' What's all this?' I asked, waving my hand at the collection of bags and baskets.

'Beef,' said Jacob succinctly.

I examined the snakes' bonds to make sure they were secure.

'Which man done bring dis beef?' I asked, feeling rather stunned by the profusion of arrivals.

'Dis men done bring um,' said Jacob laconically, gesturing down the steps behind him. I stepped over to where he sat and saw that the seventy-five steps up to the villa, and a good deal of the road beyond, was jammed with a great variety of Bafutians of all ages and both sexes. There must have been about a hundred and fifty of them, and they gazed up at me, unmoving and strangely quiet. As a rule a small group of four or five Africans can make more noise than any other race on earth, yet this great crowd might have been composed of deaf mutes for all the sound it was making. The silence was uncanny.

'What's the matter with them?' I asked Jacob.

'Sah?'

'Why dey no make noise, eh?'

'Ah!' said Jacob, light dawning, 'I done tell um Masa 'e sleep.'

This was the first of many examples I was to have of the courtesy and good manners of the Bafut people. For nearly two hours, I discovered, they had sat there in the hot sun, curbing their natural exuberance so that my slumbers might not be disturbed.

'Why you no wake me before?' I said to Jacob; 'you no savvay na bad ting for dis beef to wait, eh?'

'Yes, sah. Sorry, sah.'

'All right, let's get on with it and see what they've brought.'

I picked up the first basket and peered into it: it contained five mice with pale ginger fur, white tummies, and long tails. I handed the basket to Jacob, who carried it to the top of the steps and held it aloft.

' Who done bring dis beef? ' he shouted.

'I done bring um,' called an old woman shrilly. She fought her way up on to the veranda, bargained with me breathlessly for five minutes, and then fought her way down the steps again, clutching her money.

The next basket contained two delightful little owls. They were speckled grey and black, and the area round the eyes was pure white with a black rim, so that they looked as though they were wearing large horn-rimmed glasses. They clicked their beaks at me, and lowered their long eyelashes over their fierce golden eyes when they saw me, and as I tried to pick them up they rolled over on to their backs, presenting their large talons, and uttering loud screams. They were quite young, and in places were still clad in the cottonwool-like down of infancy, so that they looked as if they had both been caught in a snowstorm. I can never resist owls at the best of times, but these two babies were quite adorable. They were White-faced Scops Owls, and something quite new to my collection, so I had an excellent reason for buying them.

The next item was a squirrel who created a considerable diversion. He was confined in a palm-leaf bag, and as soon as I opened it he shot out like a jack-in-the-box, bit my hand, and then galloped off across the veranda. Jacob gave chase, and as he drew near, the squirrel suddenly darted to one side and then ran down the steps, weaving his way skilfully through the dozens of black legs that stood there. The panic he created was tremendous: those on the first step leapt into the air as he rushed at their feet, lost their balance, and fell backwards against those on the next step. They, in turn, fell aginst the ones below them, who went down like grass before a scythe. In a matter of seconds the steps were covered with a tangled mass of struggling bodies, with arms and legs sticking out at the oddest angles. I quite thought that the unfortunate squirrel would be crushed to death under this human avalanche, but to my surprise he appeared at the bottom of the steps apparently unhurt, flipped his tail a couple of times and set off down the road at a brisk trot, leaving behind him a scene which looked like a negro version of the Odessa steps massacre. At the top of the steps I was fuming impotently and struggling to push my way through the tangle of Africans, for the squirrel was a rarity, and I was determined that he should not escape. Halfway down someone clutched my ankle and I collapsed abruptly on top of a large body which, judging from the bits I could see, was female. I glanced desperately down at the road as I endeavoured to regain my feet, and to my joy I saw a band of some twenty young men approaching. Seeing the squirrel, they stopped short, whereupon the creature sat up and sniffed at them suspiciously.

'You!' I roared, 'you dere for de road … catch dat beef.' The young men put down their bundles and advanced determinedly upon the squirrel, who took one look at them and then turned and fled. They set off in hot pursuit, each resolved that he should be the one to recapture the rodent. The squirrel ran well, but he was no match for the long legs of his pursuers. They drew level with him in a tight bunch, their faces grim and set. Then, to my horror, they launched themselves at my precious specimen in a body, and for the second time the squirrel disappeared under a huge pile of struggling Africans. This time, I thought, the poor beast really would be crushed, but that squirrel seemed indestructible. When the heap in the road had sorted itself out a bit, one of the young men stood up holding the chattering and panting squirrel by the scruff of its neck 'Masa!' he called, beaming up at me, 'I done catch um!' I threw down a bag for him to put the animal in, and then it was passed up the steps to me. Hastily I got the beast into a cage so that I could examine him to make sure he was not damaged in any way, but he seemed all right except that he was in an extremely bad temper. He was a Black-eared Squirrel, perhaps one of the most beautiful of the Cameroon squirrels. His upper parts were a deep olive green, while his belly was a rich yellow-orange. Along his sides were a series of white spots, set in a line from shoulder to buttocks, and there was a rim of black fur marking the edge of each ear, making him look as though he had never washed behind them. But the most beautiful part of his furry anatomy was his tail. This was long and tremendously bushy: the upper parts were a brindled greeny-brown, while the underparts were the most vivid flame-orange imaginable. Placed in a cage he flipped this dazzling tail at me once or twice, and then squatted down to the stern task of devouring a mango which I had put in there for him. I watched him fondly, thinking what a lucky escape he had had, and how pleased I was to have got him. If I had known what trouble he was going to cause in the future I might have viewed his arrival with considerably less excitement.

I turned my attention back to the various containers that littered the veranda, and picked up a large calabash at random. As usual, its neck was stuffed with a tightly packed plug of green leaves; I removed these and peered into the depths, but the calabash was so capacious and so dark that I could not see what was inside. I carried it to the head of the steps and held it up.

'Which side de man who done bring dis calabash?' I asked.

'Na me, sah, name!' shouted a man half-way down the steps.

It was always a source of astonishment to me how the Africans could distinguish their own calabashes among hundreds of others. Except for a difference in size I could never tell one from the other, but the Africans knew at a glance which was theirs and which belonged to some other hunter.

'What beef 'e dere-dere for inside?' I asked, negligently swinging the calabash by its cord.

' Snake, sah,' said the man, and I hastily replaced the plug of green leaves.

'What kind of snake, my friend?'

'Na Gera, sah.'

I consulted my list of local names and found this meant a Green-leaf Viper. These were common and beautiful snakes in Bafut, and I already had quite a number of them. They were about eighteen inches long, a startlingly bright grass green in colour, with canary-yellow bellies and broad diagonal white stripes along their sides. I carried the calabash over to empty the new arrival into the shallow, gauze-topped box in which I kept vipers. Now, emptying a snake from a calabash into a cage is one of the simplest of operations, providing you observe one or two rudimentary rules. First, make sure that any inmates of the cage are far away from the door. This I did. Secondly, make sure how many snakes you have in the calabash before starting to shake them out. This I omitted to do.

I opened the door of the cage, unplugged the mouth of the calabash and began to shake gently. Sometimes it requires quite a lot of shaking to get a snake out of a calabash, for he will coil himself round inside, and press himself against the sides, making it difficult to dislodge him. Jacob stood behind me, breathing heavily down my neck, and behind him stood a solid wall of Africans, watching open-mouthed. I shook the calabash gently, and nothing happened. I shook it a bit harder, with the same result. I had never known a viper cling with such tenacity to the interior of a receptacle. Becoming irritated, I gave the calabash a really vigorous shaking, and it promptly broke in half. An intricately tangled knot of Green-leaf Vipers, composed of about half a dozen large, vigorous, and angry snakes, fell out on to the cage with what can only be described as a sickening thud.

They were plaited together in such a large and solid ball that instead of falling through the door and into the cage, they got jammed half-way, so that I could not slam the door on them. Then, with a fluid grace which I had no time to admire, they disentangled themselves and wriggled determinedly over the edge of the door and on to the floor. Here they spread out fan-wise with an almost military precision, and came towards us. Jacob and the Africans who had been jammed behind him disappeared with the startling suddenness of a conjuring trick. I could hardly blame them, for none of them was wearing shoes. But I was not clad to gallivant with a tribe of vipers either, for I was wearing shorts and a pair of sandals. My only armament, moreover, consisted of the two halves of the broken calabash, which is not the most useful thing to have when tackling a snake. Leaving the snakes in sole charge of the veranda, I shot into my bedroom. Here I found a stick, and then went cautiously out on to the veranda again. The snakes had scattered widely, so they were quite easy to corner, pin down with the stick, and then pick up. One by one I dropped them into the cage, and then shut and locked the door with a sigh of relief. The Africans reappeared just as suddenly as they had disappeared, all chattering and laughing and clicking their fingers as they described to each other the great danger they had been in. I fixed the snake-bringer with a very cold eye.

'You!' I said, 'why you no tell me dere be plenty snake for inside dat calabash, eh?'

'Wah!' he said, looking surprised, 'I done tell Masa dere be snake for inside.'

'Snake, yes. One snake. You no tell me dere be six for inside.'

'I done tell Masa dere be snake for inside,' he said indignantly.

'I done ask you what beef you done bring,' I explained patiently, ' and you say, "snake". You no say dere be six snake. How you tink I go savvay how many snake you bring, eh? You tink sometime I get juju for my eye and I go savvay how many snake you done catch?'

'Stupid man,' said Jacob, joining in the fray. ' Sometime dis snake bite Masa, and Masa go die. Den how you go do, eh?'

I turned on Jacob.

' I noticed that you were conspicuous by your absence, my noble and heroic creature.'

'Yes, sah!' said Jacob, beaming.

It was not until quite late that evening that the last hunter had been paid, and I was left with such a weird assortment of live creatures on my hands that it took me until three o'clock the following morning to cage them. Even so, there were five large rats left over, and no box from which to make a cage. I was forced to release them in my bedroom, where they spent the entire night trying to gnaw through the leg of the table.

The next morning when I arose and cleaned out and fed my now considerable collection, I thought that probably nothing more would turn up that day. I was wrong. The Bafutians had obviously thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the task of providing me with specimens, and by ten o'clock the roadway and the seventy-five steps were black with people, and in desperation I had to bargain for the creatures. By lunch-time it was obvious that the supply of animals had far exceeded my store of wood and boxes to make cages for them, so I was forced to employ a team of small boys to tour Bafut, buying up any and every box or plank of wood they could find. The prices I had to pay for boxes were exorbitant, for to the African any sort of receptacle, be it a bottle, an old tin or a box, was worth its weight in gold.

By four o'clock that evening both the staff and I were exhausted, and we had been bitten so many times and in so many places by such a variety of creatures that any additional bites went almost unnoticed. The whole villa was overflowing with animals, and they squeaked and chirruped, rattled and bumped in their calabashes, baskets, and sacks while we worked furiously to make the cages for them. It was one of those twenty-four hours that one prefers to forget. By midnight we were all so tired we could hardly keep awake, and there were still some ten cages to be made; a large pot of tea, heavily laced with whisky, gave us a sort of spurious enthusiasm for our task that carried us on, and at two-thirty the last nail was driven in and the last animal released into its new quarters. As I crawled into bed, I was horribly aware of the fact that I should have to be up at six the next morning if I wanted to have everything cleaned and fed by the time the next influx of specimens began.

The next day was, if anything, slightly worse than the preceding one, for the Bafutians started to arrive before I had finished attending to the collection. There is nothing quite so nerve-racking as struggling to clean and feed several dozen creatures when twenty or thirty more have arrived in airless and insanitary containers and are crying out for attention. As I watched out of the corner of my eye the pile of calabashes and baskets growing on the veranda, so the number of cages that I had still to clean and attend to seemed to multiply, until I felt rather as Hercules must have felt when he got his first glimpse of the Augean stables.

When I had finished the work, before buying any fresh specimens I made a speech to the assembled Bafutians from the top of the steps. I pointed out that in the last couple of days they had brought me a vast quantity of beef of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. This proved that the Bafutians were by far the best hunters I had come across, and I was very grateful to them. However, I went on, as they would realize, there was a limit to the amount of beef I could purchase and house in any one day. So I would be glad if they would desist from hunting for the space of three days, in order that my caging and food supply might catch up with them. There was no sense, I pointed out, in my buying beef from them if it was going to die for lack of adequate housing; that was just simply a waste of money. The African is nothing if not a business man, and at this remark the nodding of heads sent a ripple over the crowd, and a chorus of 'Arrrrrh!' arose. Having thus driven the point home, and, I hoped, given myself three days' respite, I purchased the animals they had brought and once more set about the task of cage-building.

At four o'clock the caging was under control, and I was having a break for a cup of tea. As I leant on the veranda rail I saw the arched doorway in the red brick wall fly open and the Fon appeared. He strode across the great courtyard with enormous strides, his robes fluttering and hissing as he moved. He was scowling worriedly and muttering to himself. As it was obvious that he was on his way to pay me a visit, I went down the steps to meet him.

'I see ya, my friend,' I said politely as he reached me.

'My friend!' he said, enveloping my hand in his and peering earnestly into my face, 'some man done tell me you no go buy beef again. Na so? '

'No be so,' I said.

'Ah! Good, good!' he said in a relieved voice. 'Sometime I fear you done get enough beef an' you go lef dis place.'

'No, no be so,' I explained. 'People for Bafut savvay hunting too much, and dey done bring me so many beef I no get box for put um. So I done tell all dis people dey no go hunt for three days, so I get chance for make box for put all dis beef.'

'Ah! I savvay,' said the Fon, smiling at me affectionately. 'I tink sometime you go lef ' us.'

'No, I no go lef Bafut.'

The Fon peered anxiously round in a conspiratorial fashion, and then, draping one arm lovingly round my shoulders, he drew me down the road.

'Ma friend,' he said in a hoarse whisper, 'I done find beef for you. Na fine beef, na beef you never get.'

' What kind of beef? ' I asked curiously.

'Beef,' said the Fon explicitly, 'you go like too much. We go catch um now, eh?'

'You never catch um yet?'

'No, my friend, but I savvay which side dey de hide.'

'All right. We go look um now, eh?'

'Yes, yes, foine!' said the Fon.

Eagerly he led me across the great courtyard, through a maze of narrow passages, until we reached a small hut.

'Wait here small time, my friend, I go come,' he said, and then disappeared hurriedly into the gloom of the hut. I waited outside, wondering where he had gone to and what kind of beef it was that he had discovered. He had an air of mystery about him which made the whole thing rather intriguing.

When he eventually reappeared, for a moment I did not recognize him. He had removed his robes, his skull-cap, and his sandals, and was now naked except for a small and spotlessly white loin-cloth. In one hand he held a long and slender spear. His thin, muscular body gleamed with oil, and his feet were bare. He approached me, twirling his spear professionally, beaming with delight at my obvious surprise.

'You done get new hunter man,' he said, chuckling; 'now you fit call me Bafut Beagle, no be so?'

'I tink dis hunter man be best for all,' I said, grinning at him.

'I savvay hunting fine,' he said, nodding. 'Sometime my people tink I get ole too much for go bush. My friend, if some man get hunting for 'e eye, for 'e nose, an' for 'e blood, 'e never get ole too much for go bush, no be so?'

'You speak true, my friend,' I said.

He led me out of the environs of his compound, along the road for perhaps half a mile, and then branched off through some maize-fields. He walked at a great pace, twirling his spear and humming to himself, occasionally turning to grin at me with mischievous delight illuminating his features. Presently we left the fields, passed through a small thicket of mimbo palms, dark and mysterious and full of the rustling of the fronds, and then started to climb up the golden hillside. When we reached the top, the Fon paused, stuck his spear into the ground, folded his arms, and surveyed the view. I had stopped a little way down the hillside to collect some delicately coloured snails; when I had arrived at the top, the Fon appeared to have gone into a trance. Presently he sighed deeply, and, turning towards me, smiled and swept his arms wide.

'Na my country dis,' he said, 'na foine, dis country.'

I nodded in agreement, and we stood there in silence for a few minutes and looked at the view. Below us lay a mosaic of small fields, green and silver and fawn, broken up by mimbo palm thickets and an occasional patch of rust red where the earth of a field had been newly hoed. This small area of cultivation was like a coloured handkerchief laid on the earth and forgotten, surrounded on all sides by the great ocean of mountains, their crests gilded and their valleys smudged with shadow by the falling sun. The Fon gazed slowly round, an expression on his face that was a mixture of affection and child-like pleasure. He sighed again, a sigh of satisfaction.

'Foine!' he murmured. Then he plucked his spear from the earth and led the way down into the next valley, humming tunefully to himself.

The valley was shallow and flat, thickly overgrown with a wood of small stunted trees, some only about ten feet high.

Many of them were completely invisible under immense cloaks of convolvulus, squat towers of trembling leaves and ivory-coloured flowers. The valley had captured the sunshine of the day, and the warm air was heavy and sweet with the scent of flowers and leaves. A sleepy throbbing drone came from a thousand bees that hovered round the flowers; a tiny anonymous bird let a melodious trickle of song fill the valley, and then stopped suddenly, so that the only sound was the blurred singing of the bees again, as they hovered round the trees or waddled up the smooth tunnel of the convolvulus flowers. The Fon surveyed the trees for a moment, and then moved quietly through the grass to a better vantage point, where our view into the wood was not so clogged with convolvulus.

'Na for here we go see beef,' he whispered, pointing at the trees; 'we sit down an' wait small time.'

He squatted down on his haunches and waited in relaxed immobility; I squatted down beside him and found my attention equally divided between watching him and watching the trees. As the trees remained devoid of life, I concentrated on my companion. He sat there, clutching his spear upright in his large hands, and on his face was a look of eager expectancy, like that of a child at a pantomime before the curtain goes up. When he had appeared out of that dark little hut in Bafut, it seemed as though he had not only left behind his robes and trappings of state, but that he had also shed that regal air which had seemed so much part of his character. Here, crouching in this quiet, warm valley with his spear, he appeared to be just another hunter, his bright dark eyes fixed on the trees, waiting for the quarry he knew would come. But, as I looked at him, I realized that he was not just another hunter; there was something different about him which I could not place. It came to me what it was: any ordinary hunter would have crouched there, patient, a trifle bored, for he would have done the same thing so many times before. But the Fon waited, his eyes gleaming, a half-smile on his wide mouth, and I realized that he was thoroughly enjoying himself. I wondered how many times in the past he had become tired of his deferential councillors and his worshipping subjects, and felt his magnificent robes to be hot and cumbersome and his pointed shoes cramping and hard. Then perhaps the urge had come to him to feel the soft red earth under his bare feet and the wind on his naked body, so that he would steal off to his hut, put on the clothes of a hunter, and stride away over the hills, twirling his spear and humming, pausing on the hilltops to admire the beautiful country over which he ruled. I remembered the words he had spoken to me only a short time before, 'If a man has hunting for his eyes, his nose, and his blood, he never gets too old to go to bush.' The Fon, I decided, was definitely one of that sort of men. My meditations on the Fon's character were interrupted: he leant forward and gripped my arm, pointing a long finger at the trees.

'Dey done come,' he whispered, his face wreathed in smiles.

I followed the pointing of his finger, and for a moment I could see nothing but a confused net of branches. Then something moved, and I saw the animal that we had been awaiting.

It came drifting through the tangled branches with all the gentle, airy grace of a piece of thistledown. When it got nearer, I discovered that it looked exactly like my idea of a leprechaun: it was clad in a little fur coat of greenish-grey, and it had a long, slender, furry tail. Its hands, which were pink, were large for its size, and its fingers tremendously long and attenuated. Its ears were large and the skin so fine that it was semi-transparent; these ears seemed to have a life of their own, for they twisted and turned independently, sometimes crumpling and folding flat to the head as if they were a fan, at others standing up pricked and straight like anaemic arum lilies. The face of the little creature was dominated by a pair of tremendous dark eyes, eyes that would have put any self-respecting owl to shame. Moreover, the creature could twist its head round and look over its back in much the same way that an owl does. It ran to the tip of a slender branch that scarcely dipped beneath its weight, and there it sat, clutching the bark with its long, slender fingers, peering about with its great eyes and chirruping dimly to itself. It was, I knew, a galago, but it looked much more like something out of a fairy tale.

It sat on the branch, twittering vaguely to itself, for about a minute; then an astonishing thing happened. Quite suddenly the trees were full of galagos, galagos of every age and size, ranging from those little bigger than a walnut to adults that could have fitted themselves quite comfortably into an ordinary drinking-glass. They jumped from branch to branch, grasping the leaves and twigs with their large, thin hands, twittering softly to each other and gazing round them with the wide-eyed innocence of a troupe of cherubim. The baby ones, who seemed to be composed almost entirely of eyes, kept fairly close to their parents; occasionally they would sit up on their hind legs and hold up their tiny pink hands, fingers spread wide, as though in horror at the depravity they were seeing in the world of leaves around them.

One of these babies discovered, while I watched, that he was sitting on the same branch as a large and succulent locust. It was evening time, and the insect was drowsy and slow to realize its danger. Before it could do anything, the baby galago had flitted down the branch and grabbed it firmly round the middle. The locust woke up abruptly and decided that something must be done. It was a large insect, and was, in fact, almost as big as the baby galago; also it possessed a pair of long and muscular hind legs, and it started to kick out vigorously with them. It was a fascinating fight to watch: the galago clasped the locust desperately in his long fingers, and tried to bite it. Each time he tried to bite, the locust would give a terrific kick with its hind legs and knock its adversary off balance, so he would fall off the branch and hang underneath, suspended by his feet. When this had happened several times, I decided that the galago must have adhesive soles. And even when hanging upside down and being kicked in the stomach by a large locust, he maintained his expression of wide-eyed innocence.

The end of the fight was unexpected: when they were hanging upside down, the locust gave an extra hefty kick, and the galago's feet lost their grip, so that they fell through the leaves clasped together. As they tumbled earthwards, the galago loosened one hand from his grip round the locust's waist and grabbed a passing branch with the effortless ease of a trained acrobat. He hauled himself on to the branch and bit the locust's head off before the insect could recover sufficiently to continue the fight. Holding the decapitated but still kicking body in one hand, the galago stuffed the insect's head into his mouth and chewed it with evident enjoyment. Then he sat, clasping the twitching body in one hand and contemplated it with his head on one side, giving vent to shrill and excited screams of delight. When the corpse had ceased to move and the big hind legs had stiffened in death, the galago tore them off, one by one, and ate them. He looked ridiculously like a diminutive elderly gourmet, clasping in one hand the drumstick of some gigantic chicken. Soon the valley was filled with shadow and it became difficult to see the galagos among the leaves, though we could hear their soft chattering. We rose from our cramped positions and made our way back up the hillside. At the top the Fon paused and gazed down at the woods below, smiling delightedly.

'Dat beef!' he chuckled, 'I like um too much. All time 'e make funny for me, an' I go laugh.'

'Na fine beef,' I said. 'How you call um?'

'For Bafut,' said the Fon, 'we call um Shilling.'

'You think sometimes my hunter men fit catch some?'

'To-morrow you go have some,' promised the Fon, but he would not tell me how they were to be captured, nor who was to do the capturing. We reached Bafut in the dusk, and when the Fon was respectably clothed once more he came and had a drink. As I said good night to him, I reminded him of his promise to get me some of the galagos.

'Yes, my friend, I no go forget,' he said. 'I go get you some Shilling.'

Four days passed, and I began to think that either the Fon had forgotten, or else the creatures were proving more difficult to capture than he had imagined. Then, on the fifth morning, my tea was brought in, and reposing on the tray was a small, highly-coloured raffia basket. I pulled off the lid and looked sleepily inside, and four pairs of enormous, liquid, innocent eyes peered up at me with expressions of gentle inquiry. It was a basketful of Shillings from the Fon.