Free 06 African Adventure by Willard Price Page A

knows exactly where the stinger is and how to pinch it off and throw it away. Then he eats the scorpion.
    If you let baboons alone they will let you alone. That’s a pretty good general rule. But it’s not always true. Suppose someone else has made the baboons very angry.
Then you happen to come along. They may take out their anger on you.
    Hal faced three hundred angry baboons. Certainly he had done nothing to provoke them. Had anyone else annoyed them? Had anyone from the camp been in the woods today?
    He could think of no one until his eye happened to rest upon a pale-green dust on the ground. Ant-poison! The blundering Colonel Bigg had been there and left a trail of poison.
    But why should that bother the baboons? They were wise enough not to eat poison.
    A pitiful wailing like the loud crying of a woman came from a female baboon whose arms wrapped round a screaming baby. Suddenly Hal understood. The small baboon’s lips were covered with a pale-green foam.
    Not as wise as its elders, it had eaten some of the green poison. Now it was suffering terrible pain. It twisted, writhed and screamed in its agony. Death was not far away.
    The troop could not punish Colonel Bigg, but here was a man they could kill and they showed every intention of doing so. They bared their great canine teeth, furiously barked and screamed, and danced up and down with rage. Hal knew that one false move on his part would bring them upon him like an avalanche. If he picked up a stone and threw it, that would seal his own fate.
    He stood perfectly still and calculated his chances. If he turned his back on them and ran, they could overtake him.
    Perhaps he could quietly withdraw. He took one step backward, then another. He heard baboon voices behind him. He turned and saw that his escape was cut off. The three hundred baboons had so distributed themselves that they completely surrounded him.
    Now they were beginning to move in on him and their angry jabbering rose to a high pitch. One by one they would leap forward, then back, then forward again. Each of these cavortings would leave them a little closer to their victim.
    Hal gave up any idea of escape. He would try something else. If baboons were so intelligent, he would appeal to their intelligence.
    Instead of retreating farther, he took a step forward. The surprised baboons shrank back a little and there was sudden silence.
    Quietly, Hal spoke to them. He said anything that came to his mind. It didn’t matter what the words were, because they couldn’t understand words. But they could understand the tone of his voice. It was gentle and kind, and there was no fear in it.
    As he spoke, he looked at the suffering youngster. He loosed the strap from his shoulder and held his canteen out at arm’s length. He shook the canteen slightly so that the splash of the liquid could be heard. Then he raised the canteen to his lips as if to take a drink. Again he stretched it out towards the baby, all the time speaking gently.
    He took another step forward. Immediately the baboon mother screamed and began to back away. But the baboons behind her did not let her go.
    Three grave, wise old fellows seemed to be reasoning with her in a sort of conversation made up of low grunts and barks. They appeared to be saying:
    ‘Perhaps he isn’t so bad after all. Perhaps he can help your baby.’
    The mother was hard to convince. She clutched her infant more closely and tried to slip away. When Hal took two more slow steps forward, she screamed with terror and that started the baby shrieking once more. Some of the other man-haters in the troop began roaring anew, and their savagely bared teeth did not make Hal any more comfortable.
    He stood perfectly still until the noise died down. Then he spoke soothingly and offered the canteen once more.
    It was the baby itself that decided in favour of Hal. It watched him with great round eyes, then reached out its hand towards the canteen. Hal did not move. The baby,