The New Noah Read Free

so we continued on our way through the forest.
    It was not long before the dogs picked up a fresh scent. The chase they led us on this time was a far longer one and much more interesting than our chase after the monitor had been. First of
all, the animal we were hunting ran downhill and we had to run desperately down the slope, leaping and jumping over fallen rocks which was really rather dangerous, as a slip could have meant a
broken leg or something even worse. Then our quarry turned round and ran uphill again, and we were forced to follow, with our hearts pounding and with sweat streaming off us.
    This hunt lasted for three-quarters of an hour and eventually, following the sound of the dog bells, we came to a level area of forest where we found the pack grouped round one end of a great
hollow tree trunk that lay across the forest floor. Sitting in the mouth of the hollow trunk was a big white animal with a curiously bear-like face and small ears. He was staring with an expression
of great scorn on his face at the dogs that were yapping and snarling around him. One of the dogs, I noticed, had a bite on his nose, and so I understood why they were keeping such a discreet
distance from this strange animal. When the black-footed mongoose saw us, he turned round and disappeared into the hollow interior of the tree.
    We called the pack off and placed a net over the end of the trunk and then went up to the other end to make sure there was no exit hole. There was none, and so we knew that the mongoose had only
one way of getting out of the trunk, and that was guarded by our net. The only thing now was to get him out of the tree. Luckily, the wood was very rotten and soft, and so by cutting with our
knives we managed to make a hole at the opposite end of the trunk to where the net had been hung. We then laid a small fire inside the hole, and when it was nicely alight we piled green leaves on
top of it, so a thick pungent smoke rushed down the hollow tree. For some time we could hear the mongoose inside coughing in an irritated manner, but finally the smoke became too much for him and
he shot out of the end of the trunk and into the net where he rolled over and over, snapping and snarling. After a certain amount of difficulty, during which we were nearly all bitten, we managed
to get him out of the net and into a strong bag. Then we carried him triumphantly back to camp.
    For the first two or three days he was very savage and would attack the bars of the cage whenever I went near. But after a while in captivity he grew quite tame and within two or three weeks
would even come and take food from my hand, or let me scratch him behind his ears.
    In the mountains of the Cameroons the thick forest gives way to rolling mountain grassland, and in this sort of country I had to use other methods of capturing animals, one of the best of which
was to drive the creatures into nets.
    It was to this grassland territory that I went to capture the giant booming squirrel, the biggest squirrel found in the Cameroons, an animal about twice the size of the ordinary English grey
squirrel. These squirrels are found also in the lowlands, but there they spend their time in the top branches of the very tallest trees, feeding on the fruit and nuts that grow up there, and very
rarely coming down to the ground. This makes it almost impossible to catch them. In the grasslands, however, they live in the small strips of forests that border the stream and in the early morning
and evening they would come down and venture out into the grass fields in search of food. My hunters had told me they knew of a section of forest land where these squirrels were plentiful, and I
decided that we would try to catch them in the early morning when they came down into the grass to feed.
    We set off about one o’clock in the morning and arrived at the place just before dawn. A suitable spot was chosen in the grass at the edge of the forest and there we spread our nets