PIG
By G. C. 13: COTTERELL W the. dimness of enormous trees, whose high out- HEN .you have been walking for a dozen miles in cropping roots have interrupted .every •second.- stride ; when the strong sweet smell of rotting vegetation, the heavy warmth of the 71mmid.,lair, the • hardness of the Path and eternal twisting have joined with the dis- comfort .of.,a rumpled, soaking shirt, a helmet .labelled Pith but ,made in truth of lead; .. when little runnels of sweats bursting the dam .of eyebrows, have been for licmi5 the unlicensed. lido of . microscopic bees, tiny, torturers dancing for ever a millimetre out of focus, it is Pleasant JO :come, suddenly upon the sunlit .clearing where, against a green back-cloth of -hillside splashed *with ivory-gleaming , granite, nestles the rest-house of Abu Abiim.
For. all the silver patchwork of its rafia thatch, the sears of .red clay on its whitewashed wails ; for all that its garden grows not with hollyhocks, delphiniums and briar rose, but with paw-paw, pine-apple, • guava and orange-trees, it is of . an English cottage that you think rather than of the mud-and-wattle cowshed in which the peripatetic District Officer is accustomed to spend his nights on tour. And by the time they have removed the small black cows, sprinkled fresh water and grasses on the beaten floor, set out the camp furniture and laid clean linen with blue china filled with smoking tea, the illusion is established and secure. Gray, who load joined me at the last halt, agreed that this was so. .tortunate, for if you must have a companion in wild Places it is well to have one on whose complaisance over be smaller things you can rely. After tea we played Badminton on an irregular rectangle impermanently scratched in the dust of the road that ran up from the village and out again . into he forest. When the score was nine-all • in the second game sixty or seventy very dirty men with bloodshot eyes, as naked as cold comfort made convenient, came sinning with long thin guns. . Powder. horns and little satchels of serval skin flapped in .ponfusion at their waists. Swiftly and purposefully • they, ,.ran, engulfing 49_1.437, stooping low to .•pass. beneath .the net,. -dodging ..sapling posts, leaping- the guy-ropes, obliterating the court. They swept by and were ,gone. A stale, loVisible fog. of snuff and sweat and rancid oil hung. for a moment in the air. A whisper—ekorok, ekorok —trembled about our astonished ears like the roucoule- ,ment of croupy doves. I looked across the net and saw how Gray now gripped his racquet as if it had grown 'trigger, butt and foresight, for he was a man whose trigger-finger itched. Bewilderment stretched comically over the • Edinburgh rock of his. normally • unruffled dourness. Then, while we stood pondering the portent, Gray's boy came out from the rest-house compound bearing his master's shining Mannlicher and my ancient Jeffery. " They go kill • beef," Yussuf prophesied. " Beef ? What beef ? " demanded Gray. " Na pig," was the happy answer, " be him. dey call so, ekorok." Yet it was not the phthisozoical mistake of his execrable pidgin-English that amused Yussuf so much as a vision of the shape of things to come.. . .
But by the time we had reached the forest the hunters had penetrated far into its mystery, and not a hint of their searching could we catch, nor any grunting cough from the little red beasts they sought. For a short while we followed what passed for a path and then, as darkness was not far away, and knowing that sounder of Poia- anochavus porous would be pursued all night by those hungry yam-caters, we decided to return. For some time we walked in silence. Is there not in any company of trees, whether it be the needle-carpeted stillness of Northern pines, the pheasant-haunted woods of some tame, fenced estate, the pagan, dwarfish throng of an Ionian olive-grove, or the great rain-forests of the Equator themselves, is there not a eloistral power that bids the human voice be dumb and mutes all Nature to an undertone ? Silence is here the law ; to break the first is to infringe the second. The shadow of the goat- legged god, you would say, still dominates the sylvan world. But suddenly.Gray, ignoring Pan, stopped in his stride and pointed out that we were lost. Absurd. The rest-house could not be a mile away. But the track we had been following with too little care came abruptly to an end ; • and with that unpleasant magic of the forest path, turned itself at once into dead leaves and broken brushwood behind us. It was now quite dark and we were certainly lost. Few sensations are more disagreeable. Calm, quite calm, implores the mind.; Run, fool, • run 1 cry, the urgent feet. Gray fired two shots. For us there was no echo, and when the mocking, laughter of the toucans had died away the silence grew only more intense. And then, faint and seeming very far away, we heard the tapping of a knife. Someone was at work high above the ground, seeking the heart of a palm. Blessing the thirst that drove man forth at dawn and dusk, calabash in hand, to drain the sap of E. Guincensis, we shouted. The tapping stopped at once. Low voices discussed our reality. Clearly we could be none but those devils who walk the forest by night and lure men to destruction. Our heads, in all probability, we carried loosely beneath our armpits. Certainly our feet turned backward on our shins. Lacking vocabulary, it was difficult to explain that this was not the case. I listened for the breaking twig, the stealthy retreat of all our hopes. I was wrong. What impulse drove our rescuer to overcome his natural fear, whether it was mere curiosity or something nobler, there is no way of knowing. But after a pause so long that I had begun tti explain the situation to the puzzled Gray, the rhythmic ring of iron on wood told us that we were safe. And in a few minutes a moonbeam—we had forgotten the moon—flashed on a whirling matchet, the creepers parted, and a young native stood before us, smiling, unafraid. With feelings nicely mixed we followed his beckoning finger and in a ridiculously short space stepped out once more upon the road. ,Two cigarettes seemed poor reward for the conquering of a nameless dread, but they were well received. I asked him his name, Grinning, he tapped his naked chest and said, Ekorok. Immediately he realised what he had done. Overpleased with himself, he had given his secret name to the white men I Dismay swept the laughter from his pleasant face ; he. turned and fled into the darkness. " Lest bogies," quoted GLy with unexpected insight, " catch him unawares." I decided pri- vately that Gray and I must part the next day. Not Burns.
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