Unlike most sea expeditions undertaken in the tropics, our expedition to Round Island was an unqualified success; if, that is, you overlook the fact that Wahab was seasick, Dave suffered from heat-stroke, and I attempted to gain an Olympic Gold Medal for the longest most painful elbow-slide attempted to date on the island.
Getting up at four in the morning in a strange hotel is always sobering, especially when you suspect, from bitter experiences in other parts of the world, that you are the only member of the expedition who is being stupid enough to be on time, or, maybe, to appear at all. I always have a guilt complex when I get up too early in an hotel, and feel it incumbent upon me to creep about so as to avoid disturbing my less eccentric fellow guests. However, blundering about in unfamiliar territory is fraught with difficulties. On this occasion these started with trying to find the light switch, and knocking over the bedside table with its decoration of large water-jug, glass, clock, and three pamphlets on the fauna of Round Island. Next came the crashing descent of the lavatory seat (like a cannonade being fired across the bows of every sleeper in the place) to be followed by a rattle as of musketry as the waterpipes cleared their throats, merging into a roar of the shower which, at that hour, sounded like the cataclysmic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. The only pleasure I derived from this whole dreary performance was the thought that I was waking my companions, who should have been up already.
Eventually, we piled sleepily into the car, complete with all the curious gear demanded of animal collectors (snake bags, nets, bottles, string, as well as cameras and binoculars), and drove off down the road, shiny wet with night rain between the whispering walls of sugar cane, towards the Yacht Club, at whose pier we were supposed to meet the rest of the party. Halfway there, luckily, we crossed paths with a car which contained Dave, who was driving in the wrong direction with great skill and confidence. Fortunately, he saw us, turned round and joined the cavalcade. Shortly afterwards, we came upon Wahab in his car, waiting under a tree to guide us; his wide, glittering, schoolboy grin was so mischievous and eager that we immediately felt not only confidence in the success of our mission, but even that getting up at four in the morning to accomplish it was a positive treat.
Arriving at the Yacht Club grounds, we parked our cars under the trees. Hopefully unseen by the Yacht Club’s Garden Committee, John and I cut ourselves lengths of the bougainvillaea hedge to make lizard-catching sticks. Then, with our bags full of food and equipment, we trooped down the pier and surveyed our craft.
She was like a baby tug, with a tiny fore-deck, closed-in bridge-deck area, and a well-deck (with polished wooden benches around the perimeter) that was roofed, but otherwise open to whatever elements we were likely to encounter. She was snub-nosed and rather bossy-looking, with a practical ungainliness which somehow gave me confidence in her sea-going abilities. According to the brass plate fastened to her, she was nearly twenty years old, and had been built, of all unlikely places, in Colchester. She had started life with the somewhat butch name of Corsair but now had been re-christened the Dorade.
She already had a cargo of humanity aboard her for, apart from a very smart-looking captain in a peaked cap, there was his first officer, who looked like a young version of Haile Selassie; a tiny walnut of a man who was a diver (in case we sank, one supposed); a benign Moslem barrister, who was a friend of Wahab’s; Tony Gardner and three forestry guards (who also ‘belonged’, so to speak, to Wahab); and a strange, portly gentleman, his sleepy-eyed, plump wife, and two female companions, all of them dressed in immaculate clothing which seemed more suitable for Henley regatta than the rigours of Round Island. As Wahab, Tony, and the rest of us joined them, I couldn’t help reflecting that we looked not unlike the strangely ill-assorted collection of individuals that the Bellman had taken with him to hunt the Snark.
With a certain amount of shouting, argument, and rearrangement of people and belongings, as always happens on these occasions, we were safely settled in the well-deck area and our luggage bestowed. The ropes were cast off, and the good ship Dorade started on her way across a black, velvety sea, besprinkled with the waning star reflections, for the eastern sky was already pale with hosts of tiny, dark cumulus clouds like a flock of curly black sheep grazing on a silver meadow. The sea was incredibly calm and the wind warm and pleasant. Those of our number who had felt qualms about the sea-going ability of their internal organs relaxed perceptibly.
The first island we passed, looming large and dark on our left, was Gunner’s Quoin, so-called because of its resemblance to the triangular-shaped piece of wood (like a flat-sided piece of cheese) that used to be wedged beneath a cannon to give it the right elevation and trajectory. Actually, as we chugged past it, I thought it looked more like the wreck of the Titanic, bottom-up and sinking by the stern. The dawn sky had now turned from silver to yellow. Those flocks of cumulus grazing on the horizon, became jet-black, with each curl rimmed in golden light, while the flocks that meandered higher in the pasture of the sky turned slate blue with flecks and stripes of delicate purple. In the distance now, we could see the silhouette of Flat Island which, except for a protuberance at one end, lived up to its name. Then there was Ile aux Serpents, or Snake Island, like an inverted pudding basin, and lastly, our destination, Round Island, which, at that angle, did not look round at all but, with the aid of a certain amount of imagination, vaguely like a turtle with its head protruding from its shell, lying on the surface of the sea.
‘Tell me,’ I asked Tony, since geographical nomenclature, like the zoological, sometimes needs explanation, ‘can you explain the anomaly of the names of those two islands?’
‘Which ones?’ asked Tony, puffing clouds of aromatic smoke from his pipe.
‘Round Island and Ile aux Serpents,’ I said.
‘I don’t quite see what you mean,’ said Tony, puzzled.
‘Well, Ile aux Serpents is round, and has no snakes inhabiting it, while Round Island is not round and is inhabited by two species of snake.’
‘Ah, yes, that is curious,’ admitted Tony. ‘My own view is that they got the islands muddled up when they were drawing the maps. It can happen, you know.’
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘I once had an official map of the Cameroons which not only deflated a major town into a village, but shifted it two hundred miles north as well.’
Gradually, the whole sky lightened to powder-blue and shell-pink, and the clouds became smooth and white, piled up on the horizon like a snow-bedecked group of trees. Then, suddenly, through this forest of cumulus, the sun shouldered its way like a tiger, and burnt a glittering path of light across the sea, that seemed to catch the Dorade in claws of heat, even at that early hour.
The closer we got to Round Island, the more forbidding did the terrain appear. The sun was rising almost directly behind it, so that we saw it mainly in silhouette, rising, apparently sheer from the sea, with a tattered fringe of palms along part of its summit. The good ship Dorade shouldered its way across a blue swell that was, though not fierce, languidly muscular, and gave the impression of great power, like a half-asleep blue cat.
‘I’m glad it’s so calm,’ said Tony. ‘In fact, it’s the calmest I’ve ever seen it. Sometimes, it takes over an hour to land, and they frequently have to cut the anchor adrift if it catches under one of the submarine ledges.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I read with reverence, not unmixed with awe, Nicolas Pike’s description of his sojourn on Round Island. His account of his first landing gives one pause for thought.’
‘Yes. Remarkable man,’ said Tony.
Pike was one of those indefatigable Victorian explorers, to whom present-day naturalists and zoologists owe such a great debt as, in their extraordinary unsuitable clothing but with bright, alert, all-embracing minds, they circumnavigated the world, cataloguing everything they saw, recording everything they heard, insatiable in their thirst for knowledge, and most of them, blessed with a strange, archaic style of writing and a sense of humour of the variety generally only found in the more ancient volumes of Punch. Their accounts of what they saw and collected have a freshness, enthusiasm and appeal which is generally lacking in the flaccid travel books foisted on us nowadays by the naturalist traveller of the jet set. Here, for example, was Nicolas Pike setting foot on Round Island for the first time:
I at once saw that what had been told me of the difficulty of landing was no exaggeration. Luckily, our fishermen crew made their arrangements skilfully. The boat was allowed to drift within a few feet of the table rock, our landing place, against which the waves were breaking.
At this stage we had to wait, and watch for an opportunity for one of our crew to jump ashore with a rope, so that the boat might be kept bow on and steady. When this was effected, the rope was securely fastened to iron rings placed there for that purpose years ago; and then our provisions, water, etc., were passed on shore.
When everything was safely landed, each one watched for the moment when the boat rose, and sprung on to the rock with a bound that made every nerve quiver; and it needed a sure foot and steady eye to alight firmly on the slippery stone.
If our little craft, which rose and fell some ten or twelve feet, had struck her bows on the precipitous ledge, she would have been hurled to Davy Jones’s Locker, and all in her, in a few seconds. The depth of the water is about four fathoms here.
As the Dorade rose and sank on the polished blue rollers, I could see what Pike meant. Scanning the cliffs we were now approaching, I could not spot a single place suitable for setting ashore anything less agile than a mountain goat.
‘Where is the landing area?’ I enquired of Tony.
‘There,’ he said, gesturing vaguely towards the apparently perpendicular rock face. ‘That flat area of rock; that’s where Pike landed.’
Peering closely, I could just make out a flat protuberance of rock that looked about the size of a dining-room table, against which the blue sea shouldered in a suggestive manner.
‘There?’ I asked, disbelievingly.
‘There,’ said Tony.
‘I don’t wish to seem over-critical,’ I said, ‘but it looks to me as though one would have to be a cross between an exceptionally agile gecko and a Sherpa to get on to that.’
‘Don’t worry, Gerry,’ said Wahab, grinning, ‘you can only die once.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m so anxious not to squander the experience by using it up too soon.’
‘Calmest day I’ve ever seen. There’ll be no difficulty,’ said Tony, seriously.
There was great activity up in the bows and the anchor rattled overboard into about forty feet of gin-clear water.
‘That’s the cave that Nicolas Pike sheltered in when he was caught in the cyclone,’ said Wahab, pointing at the half-moon scoop out of the rocks alongside the landing site.
‘The roof’s fallen now, but you can still see the shape of it,’ added Tony.
I gazed at the half-circle carved out of the cliff bedecked now with a host of shiny, black mud-skippers (that crawled in a most un-fish-like way over the rocks) and a bevy of scarlet and purple crabs, and I remembered Pike’s hair-raising description. It was the actual place, I realised with a feeling of reverence, where he almost lost his ‘unwhisperables’:
Busy as we were, the elements were collecting their forces more energetically still; and at half-past six the sea suddenly began to roll in heavily, and very soon volumes of water, ten or twelve feet deep, poured over the table rock, where our party had embarked only two hours previously. The wash of the waves swept off our water casks that were about fifty yards from it, and at an elevation of about twenty-five feet; and they were not long before they surged into the cave, nearly reaching the spot where we stood watching the scene in dismay, and cutting off our retreat.
The captain of the boat, as soon as he saw the sudden change in the weather, raised his anchor and scudded off before the wind, and we soon lost sight of him in the heavy rolling billows.
All efforts now were turned to securing everything as far as was practicable; but the night was well set in before we had finished, and the whole sky was overcast with heavy clouds. The reverberations of the deep rolling thunder made the mountain tremble, and the vivid flashes of lightning occasionally lit up the foaming, seething mass of waters below us, madly dashing against the rocks, the spray thoroughly drenching us.
Then came the rain in a deluge to add to our troubles; and it was not long before the torrents rushing down the mountain poured over the precipice forming the roof of our cave, in a cascade twenty feet wide, bringing with them stones of all sizes, that struck the bottom of the cave with great force, and then bounded off into the sea, now and then giving us a sharp blow. Here we remained, the sea gradually encroaching on our quarters, till we were obliged to crowd in the farthest corners, and hold on to prevent our being washed away. Matters were getting too exciting to be pleasant, and we felt some effort must be made to escape from our perilous position.
The day before, a long rope had been strongly attached to the rock above and one end was hanging down over the precipice; but unluckily it had been placed on the lowest part, where the heaviest body of water was falling. Fortunately, the rope was long, and my comrade emerged from his hiding-place, and, watching his chance, seized the rope and, holding on like grim death, managed to draw it in, and worked it along away from the cascade, thus succeeding in hitching it over the projecting side of the rock, which showed a perpendicular face about thirty feet high. I never saw anything more bravely done, and at the risk of his life, for, a false step, and nothing could have saved him; as it was, he got a severe contusion on his head and side from a stone striking him.
Nothing daunted, the plucky little fellow, as the smallest and lightest man amongst us, was the first to ascend the rope; and I confess the time we were waiting for the welcome signal of his safe arrival was one of awful suspense, for it was a mere chance if the rope held out, or if he could fight against the wind and driving rain.
At last, to our great joy, above the roar of the elements we heard his welcome ‘all right!’ I next ascended, and, divested of all but an old blue shirt and trousers, I grasped the rope and swung on to the projecting cliff; and commenced mounting, hand over hand. It was nervous work, swinging thus in mid air, between life and death, as a slip would have sent me into the yawning gulf below. I was soon high enough to rest my feet on the side of the rock, and could hear my friend urging me on in a voice that seemed to come from the clouds. I felt desperately thankful when I arrived at the top, in spite of my hands and feet being lacerated and bleeding, and my body bruised all over, to say nothing of the loss of the greater part of my unwhisperables.
Our landing on Round Island was considerably less hair-raising than Pike’s experience had been. No sooner had the anchor got a grip on the ocean bed than Tony and the diver slid overboard like otters, carrying two ropes, and soon these were made fast from the Dorade to the shore. As a spider lets forth a thread of silk, waits for it to catch, and then uses it as a guide-line, so these two ropes were to be our guide-lines along which we were to pull and steer the dinghy to the landing site. So we loaded our baskets of food and equipment into the dinghy, piled in ourselves, and were pulled shorewards.
Now we were closer, with the glare of the sun hidden behind the bulk of the island, we could see for the first time what a curious geological formation it was. The whole island was composed of tuff, and this soft stuff had been smoothed and sculpted by the wind and rain into pleats and scallops, so that the whole island was like a gigantic stone crinoline dropped on the surface of the sea, with here and there, standing up like jagged brocade, turrets, arches, and flying buttresses carved by the elements. I was sorry to see that the only part of the island that appeared to be remotely flat was the rocky area that formed the landing stage. The rest rose precipitously in what appeared to be an unclimbable rock face.
There was no time to worry about what awaited us on the island, for the tricky moment of disembarkation had arrived. It bore no resemblance to the difficulties that Pike had encountered at this very same spot, but even though it was the calmest anyone could remember, the boat was still lifted and lowered some three feet by the swell, and the bows of the dinghy scrunched and splintered when they touched the rock. The landing was no more difficult than stepping off the back of a rocking-horse on to a nursery table, but the way even that apparently gentle swell could grind the dinghy against the rocks, made you fully aware of the bone-crushing results if you were to miss your footing and place a leg between the boat and the shore. However, both we and the gear were landed without mishap. Picking up our various baskets and bags, we followed Wahab and Tony up the slope between the strangely sculptured pinnacles of rock.
‘Will you get these rocks?’ panted Dave. ‘Aren’t they the damnedest thing you’ve ever seen? A sort of Round Island Grand Canyon.’
A White-tailed tropic bird hung in the sky above us like an ivory Maltese Cross, screaming peevishly, and Dave paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes and reply to it with what appeared to be a blast of invective in its own tongue. Startled, the bird slid away on the wind and disappeared.
‘Aren’t they the most beautiful God-damned birds you’ve ever seen?’ enquired Dave.
I made no reply. Weighted down with a ‘fridge-full’ of iced drinks and a selection of cameras and binoculars, I had no breath for imitations or speech, and I wondered how Dave had. The surface of the rock appeared smooth, but in places it was covered with a thin crust, ready to peel away, like the skin off an over-enthusiastic sunbather’s back, and in other parts with a fine smattering of granules. Both these surfaces, if trodden on unwarily, made one’s feet slide, which either meant that one lost a yard of ground or that one slid ungracefully, and with ever increasing momentum, into the sea below. Although it was only seven o’clock, the air was warm and moist and sticky with salt, and the sweat poured down us in torrents. The equipment became heavier with each step and the slope appeared to become more vertical as we climbed. Wahab paused above us and looked back, grinning and wiping the sweat from his bronze face.
‘It is not far now,’ he called. ‘There is the picnic tree.’
I looked to where he was pointing, and there, high above us (as unattainable as the tip of Everest), I saw the curious fan-like leaves of the pandanus, beckoning us like green hands. It seemed an age before we reached the tree, which stood on a series of thick, leg-like roots. We paused thankfully in the small pools of shade cast by its leaves, stacked the food in the shade and sorted out the equipment we needed for our hunt. As we did this, there suddenly emerged from every nook and cranny around us, as if summoned by the flute of some invisible Pied Piper, a host of large, fat, shiny skinks with bright, intelligent eyes.
‘Look!’ croaked John, his spectacles misting over with emotion. ‘Just look at them! Telfarii.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Wahab, beaming at John’s obvious delight. ‘They are very tame. They always join the picnic under the tree. Later, we will feed them.’
‘Did you ever see anything so God-damned cute?’ demanded Dave. ‘Just look at those sons-of-bitches. Tame as a chorus of rabbits.’
The skinks were handsome lizards with heavy square-looking bodies, short legs, and long tails. They held their heads high as they moved with graceful, slithering motions towards us and proceeded to climb all over our piles of equipment. They were coloured a sober but pleasing shade of grey or brown, but when the sunlight hit them at a certain angle, their smooth scales, like mosaic-work, suddenly bloomed into purple, green, peacock-blue and gold, rainbowed like a film of oil on a roadside puddle. This skink, Telfair’s skink or telfarii, was one of the species we had come so far to collect, and far from appearing elusive, here was a welcoming committee going through our baggage with all the thoroughness of a band of elegant Customs officers.
Since these specimens seemed so eager to be caught, it seemed to us more sensible to concentrate on the two other species we had come for. One was Gunther’s gecko, of which it had been estimated that only five hundred specimens remained on the island, and the other a small species of skink which, Tony and Wahab informed us encouragingly, only inhabited the summit of Round Island. Tony suggested that it would be a good idea to search for the Gunther’s gecko first, since they inhabited scattered palm trees on the western slopes of the island, which would not, as yet, have received the full force of the sun.
Before we set out, Wahab, with a great flourish, produced a bag of straw hats he had chosen for everyone. The majority were broad-brimmed and these he reserved for us, as guests. In consequence, the only one he could find for himself was a cloche hat belonging to his wife, in elegant magenta and white straw, with a pink ribbon to tie under the chin. This, he donned with perfect seriousness, and was somewhat surprised at our laughter.
‘But the sun is very hot,’ he explained, ‘and one needs a hat.’
‘And very beautiful you look, Wahab,’ said Ann. ‘Don’t take any notice of them. They’re only jealous because they don’t look so handsome.’
Thus placated, Wahab gave us his searchlight grin and insisted on wearing his ridiculous headgear for the rest of the day.
We had landed some three-quarters of the way down the eastern side of the island, and we now made our way along the slopes towards the northern tip, moving among the scattered Round Island palms and the thickets of pandanus which grew in patches on the barren hillside. As well as being moulded into smooth longitudinal folds and ridges, the soft tuff had been gouged out in places by winter rains and the last cyclone (delicately, and inappropriately, called ‘Gervaise’) into long, deep gashes in the hillside, running from the steep upper slopes down to the sea, down which were carried avalanches of what top-soil remained and rocks of considerable size. Some of these ravines were, in places, ten to fifteen feet in depth, and forty to fifty feet across. I thought bitterly, as I panted my way moistly across the scorching rocks, that this moonscape had been created by the interference of man.
We had hardly travelled a hundred yards, spread out, and peering hopefully at every palm frond, when Wahab sang out that he had found a guntheri. We scrambled and panted our way across the hot rocks, tripping over the small weed, not unlike a convolvulus, which in places formed mats covered with pale lavender and pink flowers and was, in spite of the rabbits, making a valiant but forlorn attempt to keep the soil in position against the onslaught of rain and wind. When we reached Wahab, he pointed up at the main stem of a pandanus frond. Having wiped the sweat from my eyes, I peered up, and eventually saw the guntheri, spread-eagled and flattened, with its mottled-grey and chocolate skin, lichen-grey flecked, making it look like a discolouration on the bark. It was large for a gecko, being some eight inches long, with great, golden eyes and plate-like protuberances on its toes, which contain the suction pads which enable it to hang on to the smooth surface with a fly-like ability. It clung there, secure in the feeling that it was well enough camouflaged, regarding us calmly from great, golden brown-flecked eyes with vertical pupils, which gave it a strange cat-like appearance.
‘Will you look at that?’ panted Dave. ‘Isn’t that the largest God-damned gecko you’ve ever seen? What a magnificent specimen!’
After some argument, we decided that the honour of the first capture belonged to Dave. He prepared himself on a safe foothold, and then edged the bamboo pole forward, the nylon noose dangling from the end, flittering like a fish scale in the sunlight. I prayed that this sparkle would not panic the lizard, but he hung there without movement, regarding us benevolently. We all held our breath, while Dave moved the noose forward inch by inch. Now he had it dangling just in front of the gecko’s nose. This was the crucial moment, for he had to ease the noose over the animal’s head and then snap it tight round its fat neck, all without alarming it. Slowly, by infinitesimal stages, he stroked the nylon down the palm rib. Just when it was almost touching the gecko’s nose, the animal raised its head and looked with interest at the noose. We all froze. Several seconds passed, and then, as gently as though he were stroking a spider’s web, Dave eased the noose, millimetre by microscopic millimetre, over the creature’s head. Then he took a deep breath and jerked the noose tight round the gecko’s neck The gecko tightened his grip on the branch, so that it appeared to be glued to it and, without losing its tenacious hold, wagged its head from side to side to rid itself of the nylon. The problem was now to grab the gecko before it struggled too much and the nylon thread cut into the delicate skin of the neck. This was where John’s six-foot-two came in useful. Swiftly, he grabbed the base of the frond and bent it down, with the other hand engulfing the gecko, as it came within reach.
‘Got it!’ he squeaked, in tremulous triumph.
Carefully, the noose was disentangled from the lizard’s velvety soft neck and he was placed in a cloth bag. We continued on our way, and found the guntheri was much more common than we had been led to believe, though this side of the island, with its comparatively well-wooded slopes, was obviously a favourite resort for them, providing shade and food – or as much shade and food as the spartan surroundings of Round Island allowed. For an hour, we picked our way carefully over ravines and along the tortured slopes, where an incautious foot would send rocks bounding and crashing down the precipitous slopes, carrying avalanches of dry tuff with them. Frequently, multicoloured rabbits scurried out from under our feet, and we came upon numerous signs of their profligate tenancy: the convolvulus-type creeper cropped; low, baby palms with their tops amputated; slopes burrowed into so as to cause the maximum erosion.
We had walked about a quarter of the circumference of the island. The sun, which when we had started had been hidden behind the bulk of the island, now rose above it. It was like standing in front of a suddenly open oven door. The air seemed thick to breathe, almost like a soup of moisture, heavily larded with salt. The Martian landscape shimmered in the heat haze as though it was under water.
It was interesting to watch my companions. Ann had wandered off somewhere by herself, and so we were an all-male group. Wahab, wearing his ridiculous poke-bonnet, was peering up into the palms earnestly, humming to himself and periodically producing from his pocket a paper bag, full of sticky sweets, and offering them round. John, tall and lanky, glasses always on the point of misting over completely, was quivering with eagerness, determined not to waste a single instant of this time in the herpetological paradise that he had dreamt and talked of for so long. Then there was Dave, with his trumpet voice, anxious and enthusiastic, as full of snap, crackle and pop as any breakfast cereal, spilling superlatives out like a Hollywood film advertisement, interspersed with more animal noises than are necessary for the successful rendering of ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’. Then Tony, dressed in his faded green shirt and khaki trousers, merging into the landscape like a chameleon, answering any query with a staccato flood of information, by far the most un-fussed and organised of us all. From a minute basket, he seemed able to produce at any given moment anything from hot tea to marmalade sandwiches, from cold curry and rice to orange squash. So impressed was I by this conjurer’s ability that I felt, if asked, Tony could have produced a dining-table, candelabra, napery, dinner jackets, so that we could have sat down on the bleak slopes of Round Island, and partaken of a meal in the traditional way that, mythology assures us, Englishmen observe in the tropics.
Within a couple of hours, we had caught all the guntheri that we were permitted to catch, and so, we sat and roasted in a minute carpet of shade provided by a group of palmettos. John managed to find sixteen new joints in his body and to curl up in an area that would have been cramped for a chihuahua. Wahab wound himself round the palm tree and distributed glutinous sweets of thirst-provoking quality. Tony squatted on his haunches against a convolvulus-covered rock and vanished completely against the background, to reappear unnervingly at intervals, like the Cheshire Cat, to offer us orangeade or a marmalade sandwich. Dave sprawled between three patches of leaf shade the size of soup plates, and carried on a long and acrimonious exchange with the tropic birds that, with their long, needle-like tails and pointed wings and beaks, wheeled and dived above us like some constellation of mad shooting stars, uttering their shrill, whining cries. Wahab showed us that, by waving something white, a handkerchief, a snake bag or a shirt, you could get them to dive low at you. This excitement, combined with the endless cacophony of repartee that Dave indulged in, soon had some twenty or thirty birds around us, wheeling, diving and calling, white as sea foam against blue sky.
‘Now,’ said John, starting to quiver with eagerness again after our brief rest, ‘what do we do now?’
‘Well,’ said Tony, re-emerging from his background, ‘if you want to … you know, want to catch some of the smaller … the smaller skinks, they tend to live on top of the island, so we’d better go straight up to the top.’
He jerked his thumb behind us. I thought he was joking. The slope we had been walking along was so steep that it made you feel that you would have been happier if one of your legs had been three foot longer than the other, but behind us rose something as sheer, as unfriendly, and as dangerous-looking as the Jungfrau in a heat wave, devoid alike, as far as one could see, of both foot and hand-holds.
‘I was growing to like you, Tony, ‘I said, ‘but you really must try to curb this macabre sense of humour you display. If anyone took you seriously, someone of my noble proportions and youthfulness, for example, he might easily suffer a cardiac arrest by dwelling on your facetious remark.’
‘I’m not joking,’ said Tony. ‘It’s the best way up, and it’s quite easy if you zig-zag.’
‘Zig-zag,’ said Dave. ‘What sort of a God-damned nonsense is that? You’d have to be a mountain goat with adhesive feet to zig-zag up that.’
‘I assure you, it’s not nearly as bad as it looks,’ said Tony, firmly.
‘We forgot the oxygen mask,’ said Wahab, ‘so if we hold our breath until the top, it will help.’
‘I cannot think why I associate with you all,’ I said. ‘And I can’t think why I was stupid enough to come to this place in the first place.’
‘You wouldn’t have missed this, would you?’ asked John, incredulously, as if I had uttered a blasphemy.
‘No,’ I admitted, as I got to my feet and picked up my camera. ‘I probably wouldn’t. They say there’s no fool like an old fool.’
We started tacking up the precipitous slope. Reluctant though we were to admit it, we found that Tony was right, and that which had seemed unclimbable, when viewed from below, became more or less possible if we zig-zagged like a drunken centipede. Here and there, we were startled by loud, belligerent, witch-like screams, apparently issuing from the bowels of the earth. These proved to be caused by Red-tailed tropic birds, sitting in their nesting cavities under the slabs of lava, endeavouring to frighten us away. They were the size of small gulls, with tern-like heads, large, melting eyes and sealing-wax-red beaks. The plumage on the head, breast and wing butts was a delicate, glittering, pale rose-pink, as if they had been bathed in some vat of ethereal dye. When their maniacal screams proved to be unsuccessful in frightening us off, they just sat there and stared at us. It is this stupid habit of sitting still and accepting their fate that is the chief reason for their slaughter, for they are an easy prey for the fishermen who land on Round Island to kill them and take their bodies back to Mauritius, where they are sold to the Chinese restaurants.
The summit seemed unreachable. Every time we breasted a slope, thinking it was the top, another wall of rock faced us. At last we really did arrive at a completely flat area covered with slabs of rock, lying scattered about as if dropped haphazardly from the skies. It was a much hotter terrain than the cliff-sides, since nothing but sparse mats of convolvulus grew between the rocks, and not even the most spindly of pandanus provided shade. Here there were no guntheri, but instead small skinks, some four-and-a-half inches in length, with a long tail and pointed head, and such small legs they looked almost snake-like. They slithered like drops of quick-silver, their movements baffling the eye, as quick as a humming-bird’s.
‘Well, will you look at these? Will you just look at these?’ panted Dave. ‘Aren’t these the smallest God-damned things you’ve ever seen? Aren’t they the cutest little fellas?’
The skinks, bright-eyed, fluid and quick as raindrops on a window, continued their never-ending movement, oblivious of the lavish praise that was being bestowed upon them. Their smooth, shiny scales, pale-green and coffee-coloured, shone in the sunshine, and they did not deviate from the stern task of food hunting, except to hurl themselves at each other in mock combat, should their paths cross. Dave wiped his hands on his trousers, took a firm grip on the lizard stick, and approached a rather large and well-built skink which was going through the crevices of a rock with all the thoroughness of a Scotland Yard detective searching a tenement building for drug smugglers. His efficiency and dedication to duty would have won him a recommendation from any Chief of Police. He took no notice whatsoever as Dave loomed over him.
‘Come along, then, little fella,’ crooned Dave, noose dangling expectantly. ‘Come on, then.’
He dangled the noose in front of the lizard and the glitter of the nylon caught its eye. It paused and raised its head and Dave deftly slipped the noose round its neck, pulled it tight, and lifted. You might as well have tried to catch a rainbow. The smooth scales formed a polished surface for the nylon to slide on, and the weight of the lizard’s body slid its head out of the noose with no difficulty. The lizard, which had been lifted and then dropped some six inches, was completely unperturbed by his brief flight. He paused to lick his lips thoroughly and then proceeded on his insect hunting as if nothing had happened. Twice more, Dave got the noose over his head and twice more it slipped off, as if the skink had been buttered.
‘God damn it, the little bastards are as slippery as a barrel of lard,’ said Dave, mopping his face. ‘Did you ever see anything so damned agile? And the little bastard’s not scared, either. Are you, you son of a gun? Now, are you going to let Dave catch you, or aren’t you, little fella?’
Thus adjured, the lizard paused, licked his lips, yawned in Dave’s face and continued on his quick, excited hunt for six-legged comestibles. Four more times, Dave attempted to catch the skink, and four more times he failed. The amusing thing was that the skink seemed totally oblivious to the fact that he kept making short journeys into space; whenever he slid out of the noose and landed with a thump, he resumed his hunting, unflurried and with unabated enthusiasm.
In the end, since it was obvious that the noose would not work on such an apparently liquid species, John caught him by hand. We unanimously agreed that this was the best (if the most exhausting) way of doing it. We’d been employing this method for some time, when I became aware of an almost total lack of shade on the summit. There were no trees, and the only shadows were cast by the tumbled landscape of rocks, but now it was getting on for midday, and the sun was almost vertical above us, so that the shade the rocks were producing was negligible. I became worried about our bags, full of precious guntheri; so it was decided that I would leave the others hunting, and make my way back to the picnic tree, which would provide enough shade for our precious specimens. So I departed, carrying the bundle of cloth bags in the shade of my body, leaving the others quartering the hot, dry terrain like hounds, shouting to each other: ‘Look out! He’s going under there.’ ‘Quick! Quick! Get on the other side as he comes out,’ and: ‘Hell! I can’t turn the bloody rock over.’
Slowly, picking my way among the tumbled boulders, I made my way along the spine of the island until I felt that I was more or less opposite the picnic tree site. Then, I approached the precipitous slope and looked for the Dorade as a landmark. While we’d been stupid enough to leave the safety of the boat and blunder about in the sun after a load of lizards, the Henley regatta crowd had done no such thing; they had paid a visit to a reef some half a mile away to indulge in cool underwater swimming and fishing. As I looked down the hillside to the sea, I could see the Dorade, white and trim, looking about the size of a matchbox, steaming towards the landing spot. I made my way a short distance down the slope and found a young palm tree that was giving something approximating to shade. There I squatted, sheltering my precious cargo, watching the Dorade and waiting for her to anchor, so that I could get my bearings. From the top of the island, the whole terrain looked completely different, and I could not see the picnic tree at all. As I had no desire to walk farther than was necessary in that blistering heat, I thought that I would wait for the Dorade to act as a marker. Presently she chugged from the royal blue and purple deep sea into the jay’s-wing blue and jade-green of the shallow water, and dimly I heard her anchor rattle overboard. I mopped my face, hoisted my camera on to my shoulder, picked up my bags of geckos and started down towards the sea.
I very soon discovered that to attain my objective was as difficult as Alice had found making progress in the Looking-Glass garden. Normally, if you have a high vantage point, you can more easily pinpoint your goal than if you are on a level with it, but in the case of Round Island things were different. As I have said, the island is like a stone crinoline dropped on the seas surface, and whichever pleat you happen to be standing on, it is almost impossible to see the rest of the garment. After I had lost the boat twice, and had had to turn back or aside three times because I had reached such sheer sheets of rock that it seemed imprudent to go on, unless I was seeking a broken leg, I suddenly spotted, far below me a flash of scarlet. This, I knew, was a towel I had brought and had draped over the spare film and various foods under the picnic tree to provide some sort of shade.
This, then, was going to act as my marker.
I clattered and slid on my way, keeping the little red splash firmly in sight. I rested for a second time under a small group of pandanus, whose tattered leaves drummed against each other nervously and whispered sibilantly in a sudden puff of hot wind from the sea. Carefully, I felt my geckos in their bags to make sure they were not being affected by their journey. The sharp nip which one of them administered led me to believe that they were faring a good deal better than I was. I had sweated so profusely that I felt that if I lost another cupful of moisture, I would turn into a ginger-bread crumble and blow away. It was only the thought of the iced drinks that awaited me under the picnic tree that kept me going.
Grimly, I shouldered my load and plodded on. I came presently to a great, almost sheer precipice of rock, the top half of which was decorated by a tiny mat of convolvulus-like weed, starred with pale pink flowers. To reach a ravine that led down towards a lower level, I had to cross this dangerous bit of rock, and so decided, in case the exposed portion was slippery, that I would walk on the carpet of weed. Slowly, I edged my way across, making sure of one step before I took another. I was just congratulating myself on my climbing skill, when I inserted one foot into a natural noose formed by the creeper, tripped, and fell heavily on to my back. My camera went skittering off joyfully, and I held my bag of lizards aloft, so that at least I wouldn’t fall on them.
I’d landed on my spine with such force that I heard what appeared to be my whole vertebral column play a rapid tune, producing the sort of noise that is usually only obtained by the use of maracas. I had landed on the bare rock and as there was nothing I could grab hold of to prevent my sliding, I proceeded down the rock face on my back with ever-increasing speed, gathering around me an avalanche of loose tuff and bits of extremely sharp lava. As my momentum increased, my body started to turn so that presently I knew I should be on my stomach. I was terrified lest I should twist and inadvertently roll on to my bag of lizards, which I still held in a tenacious grip. I didn’t dare let go of them, for if they had lodged on that inhospitable sheet of rock it was probable that I would not be able to climb up to retrieve them.
There was only one thing to be done, and that was to use my elbows as a brake. This I did, and was gratified to discover that the pain I suffered was not in vain. Not only did I remain on my back and my shredded elbows but I slowed down my pace of descent, and eventually actually stopped. I lay still for a moment to savour my wounds to the full, and then moved bits of my body experimentally to see if anything was broken. To my surprise, nothing was, and the amount of gore my right arm was producing was out of all proportion to the wounds it had sustained. Painfully, I shuffled sideways across the rock face, retrieved my camera, which was intact, and gained the ravine where the going was easier. At the first group of palms I came to, I sat down, made sure my geckos and my camera had sustained no injuries, and mopped up the blood from my elbows. Then after a brief pause, I got to my feet and gazed down towards my red landmark, by the sea.
It had completely disappeared.
Not only had it disappeared, but the Dorade had disappeared as well, and the view now lying below me bore no resemblance to any terrain I had seen or walked through that day. To say that I was irritated by these circumstances, is putting it mildly; I was hot, exhausted, thirsty and aching all over, and I had a severe headache. For all the indications to the contrary, I might have been in the middle of Australia, fifty miles north of Lhasa, or on one of the more inimical craters of the moon. Making a blasphemous commentary on my own stupidity in falling I set off down the ravine in what I hoped was the right direction. It seemed to be an area singularly lacking in palms, and eventually I was forced to crouch and rest in a tiny patch of shade caused by a hummock in the sides of the ravine. Grimly, I plodded on and soon, to my delight, could hear voices and various nautical noises that told me I was near the landing stage. How close, I did not realise until I rounded I dump of rock and found myself practically on the shore. High above me was the picnic tree and my red towel. I had somehow misjudged my descent, with the result that some two hundred and fifty feet above me lay shade, cool drinks and salve for my various contusions.
The last climb was the worst. The blood pounded in my ears my head ached, and I was forced to rest frequently. Finally I staggered up the last slope and collapsed in the fretted shade of the picnic tree. A few minutes after, Dave arrived, looking, I was delighted to see, as fragile as I felt. When I could speak, I asked him how he had fared, and he confessed that he had passed out a couple of times with the heat. He certainly looked white and ill-kempt. Soon he was regaling me with an account of his adventures. The worst moment had been when John Hartley, coming upon the recumbent Dave, had made an effort to rally him but had got sidetracked when he spied a large telfairii and various geckos sitting close together. Having captured these and finding nothing more suitable to put them in, he promptly and callously commandeered Dave’s tee shirt and handkerchief and continued on his way triumphant, leaving Dave to make out as best he could. This made John one of the people least likely to succeed in a Good Samaritan contest, according to Dave.
‘Just left me there,’ Dave confided to me, croakingly. ‘Just high-tailed off and left me useless as the tits on a boar hog and twice as undecorative. That John’s inhuman, I’m telling you. Can you understand a guy who’d let a fella human die for the sake of a gecko, for God’s sake?’
He was still busy embroidering his experience, complete with death-rattle, bird calls, and the jeering cries of callous lizards, when the others straggled back to the picnic tree. They were all in various stages of exhaustion, with the exception of Tony who looked, if anything, slightly cooler and more immaculate than when he had set out. The others dived for the shade and the cool drinks, whereas Tony squatted in the full glare of the sun and, with a few magic passes, conjured out of thin air a cup of steaming tea and some glutinous, but doubtless nourishing, chutney sandwiches.
After we had revived somewhat, we set about the last task; to catch some of the Telfair skinks which surrounded us in such profusion that one had to be careful where one sat, and where one placed one’s cup or food. A peanut-butter sandwich that Dave misguidedly placed on the rock by his side while he drank, was seized and disputed by two large Telfair skinks before he could rescue it, and disappeared down the hill in a sort of whirling rugger-scrum. Another large Telfair seized on a banana skin and, with his head held high, rushed off over the rocks like a standard bearer, with a host of eager skinks tearing after him. He reached a group of palmettos some distance away without having to relinquish his trophy, but the ownership of it was still being disputed vigorously when we left the island half an hour later.
With the skinks behaving like domestic animals, it was no trouble at all just to sit there, choose one’s specimen and simply drop the noose over its head as it investigated a Thermos flask, a sandwich, or a Coca-Cola bottle. Occasionally, there were so many around us at one time that we would make a mistake and catch the wrong one (a male instead of a female, say). The animal would then be released, and having indignantly given us a swift and painful bite, would continue its examination of our belongings as if nothing had happened.
At last, we had our quota of these enchanting tame lizards and packed up to leave Round Island. We were aching, tired, and sun-blistered, but we wouldn’t have missed the experience for anything. We had not seen either of the two species of snake (which was not surprising, considering their limited numbers) and we had not captured the strictly nocturnal gecko, but our collecting bags bulged with guntheri, the small, sleek skink, and the Telfair skink. We were well satisfied.
We set off across the blue, gently undulating sea, leaving Round Island behind us ablaze in the setting sun. It looked more bleak and barren than ever, but now we knew the patches of palms and steep-sided ravines that gave blissful shade, the banks of tuff that provided wind-eroded homes for the Red-tailed tropic birds, the fronds of the palms decorated with geckos, and the bald, hot dome of the island alive with the quick, glittering shapes of the little skinks. We knew that under the picnic tree a host of eager, elegant Telfair skinks formed a welcoming committee, anxiously awaiting the next visiting humans. To us, the island was no longer just a chunk of barren volcanic debris, sun-drenched, sea-washed and wind-sculpted, but a living thing as important, as busy, as full of interest as a human village, peopled by charming and defenceless creatures eager to welcome one to their hot and inhospitable home.
The sea was calm and the sky without a shred or wisp of cloud, so that the sunset lay along the horizon like a glowing ingot of gold, fading gradually to green as the sun disappeared. Most of the party slept. Wahab, having consumed a pineapple, a cucumber and some cold curry, was promptly sick, went a peculiar shade of grey, curled up like a cat and went to sleep.
We drove back the long and bumpy ride to Black River, and there we laid the bags with our precious cargo on the cool floor of Dave’s spare room and went tiredly to bed. The next morning we unpacked our catch and found, to our relief, that none of our captives was any the worse for their incarceration. The guntheri, velvety and glowering in a Churchillian manner, strolled nonchalantly into their cages. The little skinks skittered eagerly into their new environment, brisk, alert, each looking like the Salesman of the Year. The Telfairs were equally curious about their new home – a lavishly decorated aviary. We eased them out of their bags and they investigated every nook and cranny. Then, within five minutes, they were satisfied with their new quarters. They converged on us and, as if they had been born in captivity, climbed into our laps and accepted fat, black cockroaches and juicy lumps of banana from our fingers, in a most confiding and flattering way.