Free Gerald Durrell by The Overloaded Ark Page B

two
ruby-red spots appeared in my beam: I had located the “rabbit”. There, sitting
peacefully on a branch high above us, nonchalantly cleaning its whiskers in the
torchlight, sat a fat grey-coloured rat.
     
    “That’s a rat,
Elias, not a rabbit,” I said, rather pleased to find my zoological knowledge
still secure. The appearance of an arboreal rabbit in the zoological world
would, I felt, cause rather a stir.
     
    “Na rat, sah?
Here we call um rabbit.”
     
    “Well, can we
catch him, do you think?”
     
    “Yes, sah. Masa
and Andraia go wait here, I go climb de stick.”
     
    We kept our
torches aimed at the rat, and Elias disappeared into the darkness. Presently
the tree began to shake as an indication that he had started to climb, and the
rat peered downwards in alarm. Then it ran to the end of the small branch it
was sitting on and peered down again to get a better view. Elias’s head came
into view among the leaves directly below the branch on which the rat was
sitting. “Which side ’e dere?” he inquired, screwing up his eyes against the
light.
     
    “ ’E dere dere
for up, on your left side.”
     
    As we shouted
our instructions the rat slid down a creeper with great speed and landed on a
branch about fifteen feet below Elias.
     
    “ ’E done run,
Elias,” screamed Andraia shrilly, “ ’e dere dere for under you now. . . .”
     
    Painfully,
following our shouted directions, Elias descended until he was on a level with
the rat. The quarry was still sitting on the branch, putting the finishing
touches to his toilet. Slowly Elias edged his way out along the branch towards
him, one hand cupped ready to grab. The rat watched him in a supercilious
manner, waited until Elias lunged forward, and then launched itself into space.
Instinctively we followed it with our torches, and watched it crash into a
small bush and disappear. From above came a crack, a roar of anguish and
fright, and the sound of a heavy body descending slowly and painfully
earthwards. Flashing our torches up we found Elias had disappeared, and only a
few leaves fluttered slowly down to show that he had once been up there. We
found him nursing his leg in the bushes at the base of the tree.
     
    “Eh . . . aehh!”
he groaned, “dat stick no give me chance. It done broke, and I de get wound plenty .”
     
    Careful
examination disclosed only a few scratches, and after soothing Elias’s hurt
feelings we proceeded on our way.
     
    We had been
walking some time and carrying on a lively discussion on the difference between
rabbits and rats, when I found we were walking on white sand. Looking up, I
discovered that we had left the forest, and above us was the night sky, its
blackness intensified by the flickering stars. We were actually walking along
the banks of the river, but I had not noticed it, for here the brown waters flowed
sluggishly between smooth banks, and so there was no babble of water; the river
flowed slowly and silently past us like a great snake. Presently we left the
sand beach and made our way to the thick fringe of waist-high growth that
formed a border between the sand and the beginning of the forest. Here we
paused.
     
    “Na for dis kind
of place you go catch water-beef; sah,” whispered Elias, while Andraia grunted
in agreement. “We go walk softly softly for dis place, and sometime we go find
um.”
     
    So we commenced
to walk softly, softly through the lush undergrowth, shining our torches ahead.
I had just paused to pluck a small tree frog from a leaf and push him into the
bottle in my pocket, when Elias hurled his torch at me and dived full length
into the leaves. In my efforts to catch his torch as it whirled towards me I
dropped my own, which hit a rock and promptly went out. I bungled the catch,
dropped the second torch as well, and that followed the first into oblivion.
Now we only had the illumination of Andraia’s, which was very anaemic, for the
batteries were damp and old. Elias was rolling