Free Mrs. Pollifax on Safari by Dorothy Gilman Page A

Cyrus Reed, walking up the aisle.
    “Oh yes,” she said, beaming at him, and then, thinking of what Mrs. Lovecraft had just told her, she added, “and I’m learning so much, it’s really so educational.”
    At midmorning they stopped briefly at an abandoned ferry crossing where the remains of a road cut like a knife through the tall grass. Crispin allowed them to climb out for a moment and walk a few cautious paces down the road. “But not far,” he said firmly. “Not without a guard.”
    “Why should we need a guard?” protested Mrs. Pollifax.
    “It’s dangerous.”
    She looked out upon the peaceful scene, at bright petunia-like flowers blooming by the roadside, at a landscape empty of all movement, and she was incredulous. “But it looks so safe!”
    Tom Henry grinned. “It does, doesn’t it? But we’re near the river, you know, which means if you left the road you might stumble across a crocodile sunning itself in the mud. Failing that, there are puff adders, pythons, black mambas and bushwangers, not to mention the possibility of a rhino or hippo who might be in an ugly temper.”
    “Oh,” said Mrs. Pollifax, taken aback.
    Crispin said, “You treat many snake bites at your hospital, Doctor?”
    “Maybe not so successfully as your village medicine men,” said Tom, “but we save a few. Speaking of medicine men, it’s certainly humbling to realize that people here evolved their own vaccine centuries before we did in the laboratories.”
    Crispin said modestly, “We are in the position to learn, you know. We see the mongoose fight with a poisonous snake, he is bitten, he runs to a certain bush and eats the leaves and lives. The medicine man studies all these signs.”
    Steeves said, “And which do you visit, Crispin, when you feel ill?”
    Crispin grinned. “I would go first to the medical doctor,” he said, his eyes laughing, “and then I would visit the medicine man just to be sure.”
    “Covering all your bets,” chuckled Dr. Henry as they climbed back into the boat.
    Lisa, standing on the bank next to Mrs. Pollifax, said in a low voice, “Care to bet whose arms Mrs. Lovecraft is going to fall into?”
    She had misjudged her, however; Amy Lovecraft graciously accepted Crispin’s hand, stepped onto the bow of the boat and remained there for a long moment, her profile turned to the sky, before allowing John Steeves to help her inside.
    “What’s your deadliest snake?” Reed asked Crispin, which brought a laugh from Lisa.
    “Oh the viper,” he said. “You are bitten, and in ten minutes you die.”
    “Good heavens!”
    “The black mamba is second, killing in ten or fifteen minutes. If you go to the zoo in Lusaka the snake man will tell you all about it. He will also tell you snakes neither see nor hear, they only sense vibrations.” He grinned. “Therefore if you meet a snake and stand perfectly still it won’t find you.”
    “I couldn’t possibly stand still,” said Lisa, shivering. “I’d run like blazes.”
    Mrs. Pollifax looked at Crispin, and then she looked at the dark, jungle-like banks of the river lined with twisted roots like claws, deep shadows, tangles of brush and palm and the white tracery of dead roots. She thought of the disciplines needed in this country to avoid sudden painful death and she acknowledged ruefully that survival here was a trifle different from crossing on the green light.
    Some forty-five minutes later they reached Chunga camp again. They had seen an egret, a cormorant and a group of impala and hippos, and Julian was waiting on the dock to tell Mrs. Pollifax that a policeman from Lusaka had arrived to ask her questions.
    “He arrived fifteen minutes ago,” Julian said, helping her out of the launch, “and I told him I will bring you to him. He’s seated over there in a chair behind the trees, very private.”
    There was no curiosity in Julian’s candid gaze; in Mrs. Pollifax, however, there was considerable curiosity and she admitted to being