The Akimbo Adventures. Alexander McCall Smith
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rough and the grass was thick and high. Akimbo had no idea where they were, but he knew that they must be nearing the place where they might expect to find elephants, as he had seen the forests in the distance when they stopped that morning.
They disturbed several wild animals as they made their way. An antelope bounded off from a hollow immediately ahead of them, crashing through the undergrowth in panic. Another large animal was disturbed a little later, and they heard it charging away during the night. It could have been a rhinoceros, and this frightened Akimbo as he knew how dangerous rhinos could be.
They stopped to rest once or twice, and Akimbo found himself less exhausted than on the previous night. At last, towards dawn, they stopped altogether. They were now in heavily wooded land, and at any point they might see elephant. Akimbo assumed that now the hunt was on.
That morning, after resting for three or four hours, the group began to move slowly through the clumps of great trees which broke up the plain. One of the men was now acting as a tracker, and he had picked up the signs of elephant. From time to time he pointed at something on the ground and said something to the man with the limp, who nodded.
Suddenly the tracker stopped. The leader went up to him and crouched beside him. Akimbo and the other men crouched down too, waiting for a sign from the leader.
Akimbo saw the elephants at the edge of the trees. They were moving slowly, browsing among the branches of the trees with their trunks, pulling down clumps of foliage. His heart stopped for a moment. There was a male elephant among them who had a very large pair of tusks – great, white sweeps of ivory. Akimbo knew that the poachers would be bound to go for him.
Suddenly two of the elephants turned to face them. There was a ripple of activity amongst the others, as the two large bulls flapped out their ears and lifted their trunks in the direction of the crouching men. Akimbo realised that the animals had got their scent and were now alarmed. And if they were alarmed, then they might charge.
The leader gestured to one of the other men, who ran up to him with a rifle. The elephant must have seen the movement, as he suddenly moved forward several paces and let out a bellow. Behind him, the other elephants had moved for protection into the shadows of the trees.
Akimbo had never seen a charging elephant and he was not ready for the speed with which it moved. For a few moments he was frozen in terror, his eyes fixed on the great creature which was charging towards them. Then, quite suddenly, the elephant stopped. For a short while it stood still, its ears out, its body quivering, small eddies of dust about its feet, and then, without warning, it turned aside and moved back towards the herd.
As this was happening, the leader was fumbling with the rifle. By the time he had it to his shoulder, the elephants had disappeared into the thickness of the forest. Akimbo felt all the fear drain out of his body. They were safe. And so were the elephants – at least, for the time being.
Escape
The leader was clearly angry over what had happened. He called his men over to him and spoke sharply to them, pointing to where the herd had been to underline his words. They all knew that the elephants would move quickly, now that they had scented danger, and that it would be difficult to catch up with the herd.
For a few minutes the leader seemed uncertain what to do. Then he spoke. ‘We’ll follow them. I want to get those tusks.’
One of the men stepped forward.
‘But they’re going west. There are rangers that way. It would be too dangerous. They might . . .’
The leader interrupted him abruptly.
‘I want those tusks. If you’re frightened, you can go home now.’
The man looked down.
‘I’m not frightened.’
Akimbo listened. The information that they were going to travel west excited him. In that direction lay the ranger camp, and home, and this would make it easier for him to carry out his plan.
With the tracker in the front, his eyes glued to the ground, the line of poachers snaked its way through the thick savannah. Tracking elephants was much easier than tracking other animals, as elephants destroy so much as they make their way, but even so it took all the tracker’s skill.
By late afternoon there was still no sign of the elephants and Akimbo wondered what they would do when darkness fell. It would be impossible then to follow the herd any further – and dangerous, too, as they could suddenly find themselves in the middle of the herd in the darkness, and they would stand no chance then.
When the light became too bad to go on, the leader called his men to a halt. Everybody was tense, weary, and thirsty, and they were pleased to be able to rest.
‘We will spend the night here. At first light we can go on.’
‘But we’re too close to the ranger camp,’ one of the others said. ‘It’s only one or two hours that way.’
Akimbo watched where the man pointed. Then, without bothering to hear the leader’s answer, he walked off and lay beneath a nearby bush, curling up as if to sleep. The other men all settled themselves too, concealing themselves beneath branches or bushes, and soon anybody walking past would not have realised that five men and a boy were sleeping there.
The boy was not asleep. Although his bones ached with tiredness, Akimbo fought back the waves of drowsiness, and he struggled to keep his mind on what he had to do. At last, when he was sure that all the others were fast asleep, he crept out from underneath his sheltering place.
Nobody moved. Nor did anybody stir as he began to move off in the direction of the ranger camp, which one of the men had pointed out.
‘I hope he was right,’ he said to himself. ‘If he’s not . . .’ But Akimbo did not allow himself to think about that. For the moment he knew exactly what he had to do, and he concentrated all his energy on doing it.
It was more frightening than Akimbo could ever have imagined. The moon was behind cloud, and there was very little light. All that he could make out around him were large black shapes – the shapes of trees, bushes, rocks. Akimbo tried to fix his mind on some landmark in order to keep travelling in the right direction, but it was almost impossible to do this in the darkness. The shape which he aimed for would suddenly be lost, or would look different when he approached it, and there was no way of telling that he was not going round in one large circle.
‘If I’m just going round and round I’ll come back to where I started from and I’ll walk right into the poachers.’
After about fifteen minutes the cloud cleared and there was a little more light from the sky. Akimbo could now identify an object to aim for in the distance. He could also move faster, as he did not have to worry so much about the ground suddenly giving way over a cliff.
He broke into a run. It was painful to his tired legs, but he managed to push himself to do it. He scratched himself, of course, on thorn bushes and protruding twigs, but he did not mind that. All he wanted now was to reach the ranger camp and safety.
Suddenly Akimbo stopped. His heart was pounding within him, his skin prickling with fear. Had his ears deceived him, or was it . . . Yes. There it was again. It was a roar. Still quite