Tracks of the Tiger (11 page)

Peter eloquently looked up at the rain that was still falling out of the sky. ‘But we've got to catch it somehow.'

‘I've got an even better way.'

Beck turned his attention to the bamboo cluster he had seen earlier. The segmented stalks were old and large. The waxy wood had mellowed from green to yellow. He tapped one of the sections experimentally, and it made a resonant
bonk
. He tapped another, nearer the top. This one had broken off higher up and he could see the jagged end above his head. Its noise was slightly different.
Bunk!

‘You going to play a tune?'

‘They sound different because one of them is full of water. It's drained out of the top one.'

Beck kept tapping, and several of the lower segments sounded full. It wasn't possible to cut them very neatly – he didn't have the tools to saw along the join where the segments met. Instead, he had to hack away with the crowbar, but by the end of it he had two rough, jagged, but intact segments. They were each about half a metre long. When he proudly held them up to Peter and shook them, they could hear the water slosh about inside.

‘We won't get thirsty!' he said.

Beck also set up another water collector, but unlike the previous night, he just stamped his shoe into the ground to make a hole about the size of a football, and then moulded several banana leaves across it. The hole began to fill up even before he'd finished.

Finally it was time to haul everything up to the nest. Beck pulled down more lengths of rattan vine, the cable of the jungle. These he coiled and carefully hung across Peter's shoulders. Then he stood and watched as Peter started to climb, and gave advice about where to find foot- and handholds. Peter was a slow and nervous climber but the tree was relatively easy to scale.

‘OK! Good job,' Beck called once Peter was safely perched in the nest. ‘Now throw the vine down.'

There was a pause, and then the entire coil landed at his feet. Beck put his hands on his hips and glared up. Peter's apologetic face appeared over the edge of the nest.

‘Oh. You meant hang onto one end of it, didn't you?'

And so Beck climbed the tree again, taking the vine back up, while raindrops as big as bumblebees splashed down around him. Then he climbed back to the ground, tied the banana leaves and the bamboo sections together, and Peter hauled them up to the nest while Beck climbed up for a third time.

It was still raining, but not as heavily. Even so, Beck's first job was to get some kind of roof up. Just because the rain had stopped now didn't mean it wouldn't rain again. This was the jungle, after all.

A branch stuck out above the nest, about a metre and a half above their heads. Beck used this as a support for the roof. He could split the stems of the banana leaves and then drape them over the branch. It meant they had a sloping roof and the rain would drip down on either side of them. They were still wet, but at least they wouldn't be getting any
wetter
.

‘And the final touch, at least until the engineer comes round to install our broadband connection – the fire!' Beck said.

Peter sat with his knees hugged to his chest and watched Beck prepare the small pile. Seat stuffing, like the previous night, and bamboo shavings. The fire steel sparked and cast an orange light over Beck's face every time he struck it. And struck it again. This fire was very reluctant to catch.

‘I can't believe we're lighting a
fire
in a
tree
,' Peter commented.

‘
Trying
to light,' Beck corrected him under his breath.

He grimaced with frustration. The kindling was dry but the air feeding it was not. He would strike sparks and they would take root in the stuffing and glow for a few moments. Then they would die away again. Eventually he simply went into overdrive, striking the fire steel over and over and over again until a whole cloud of sparks fell down onto the pile. Lots of sparks worked where one spark had failed. The pile couldn't help taking the hint that it was meant to burn. First a red glow crept along a strand of stuffing. Then it passed onto another strand, and then another.

‘Thank God for that,' Beck sighed. ‘Now let's build it up and then add some of that termite nest to get rid of these mosquitoes. They're biting me to bits.'

The lumps of termite nest soon began to burn freely, and the smoke billowed out in clumps. As Peter had pointed out, the nest was made of termite poo – basically digested fragments of tree, still dry from being in his bag. And it smelled like termite poo! Warmth began to radiate out from the fire and Peter huddled closer.

‘Take your shoes and socks off,' Beck told him. ‘We need to get them as dry as we can.'

The night before, they had roasted lizard tail on a spit over a fire. This time the spit held their footwear, suspended over the low flames. It was never going to be a roaring bonfire, but given the small size of their treetop camp, that was just as well.

By now the rain had stopped and darkness had fallen. Neither boy felt much like chatting. They sat quietly and enjoyed a dinner of figs and bananas and the grubs they had collected during the day. Some of these were large enough to be roasted on the end of twigs. They washed down their meal with water from the bamboo sections. It wasn't as filling as the lizard they'd eaten the night before but it would do until morning.

And they listened to the jungle. Up here, halfway between the ground and the canopy, there was a new layer of sound. The animals calling to each other felt closer, more immediate. Their ears seemed to pick up new frequencies that they just didn't catch down below.

And then they heard a sound that made them very glad they weren't down below. A bass rumble, a snarl, a sound like tearing paper and thunder.

Their eyes met. Peter's were wide.

‘Tiger,' Beck said softly. He peered over the edge of the nest. By now the floor of the jungle was swathed in gloom and he couldn't see anything. Tigers were adapted to blend in – that was the point of camouflage.

‘Does he know we're here?' Peter whispered.

‘Maybe. Don't worry. They don't climb trees.'

‘So they don't climb and they do like water. Has anyone told them they're meant to be cats?'

There was another roar from below, though they couldn't tell how close it was. The entire jungle seemed to amplify the sound; it echoed all around.

And this time the roar was answered by another animal noise. A hoot and a squawk from nearby – up in the trees, on the same level as the boys. They recognized the sound. It was an orang-utan, very close by.

It was immediately answered by another call behind them. Their heads whipped round.

Something strange was happening. The moon had come up above the canopy, and silver light filtered down through the trees. The humid air turned into a mist that glowed faintly. Branches and leaves were silhouetted as dark lines against it. And it picked out other things too: dark clumps that were other nests; long-armed forms that swung through the leaves as easily as the boys would cross a road.

They hadn't noticed earlier that their nest was part of a small community scattered over a hundred square metres of treetops.

More orang-utan calls, from in front and behind and all around. Beck realized, with awe, that they were communicating. He could imagine what they were saying:

Leaves and branches rustled loudly overhead. Something heavy was coming their way. They ducked, and an orang-utan swung over their heads. Without even stopping, it grabbed a handful of figs with its free hand and kept going. However, it glanced back and Beck was sure their eyes met. It seemed to give its approval to their staying the night.

‘This is unearthly,' Peter whispered. He looked at Beck and his eyes seemed to shine, even in the dark. ‘We came to see them in a sanctuary and now we're living among them!'

‘Let's hope not permanently, though,' Beck said quickly. ‘It's pretty amazing, but we've got a mission – and that is to get our backsides back to safety.'

‘We will, Beck. We've done it before and we can do it again.' Peter snuggled down and curled himself into a ball. If that tiger hung around, then they were staying up here for as long as it took, he thought. But there was no doubt that the jungle had given them a blessing he hardly felt they deserved.

‘Hope I don't fall out,' Peter mumbled sleepily.

‘You won't. They build these things properly.'

There was no answer, and Beck knew his friend was already asleep. He wondered if this was how baby Hannah could drop off so quickly in her parents' arms. She felt safe, secure and watched over. What could go wrong? He lay back, feeling safe and awed while the orang-utans continued to chirp and hoot around them. It was a very bizarre lullaby that soothed him to sleep.

It must have happened very quickly, because before he knew it he was awake and the sun had come up. The chorus of orang-utans had stopped and Peter was whispering his name hoarsely.

‘Beck!
Beck!
'

Beck lazily opened one eye. Peter was lying absolutely still, quite rigid, clearly terrified. A hairy tarantula, fifteen centimetres across, was crawling slowly across his chest.

‘Don't move an inch, Peter.'

Beck scrambled quickly to his knees and leaned close to study the creature. Body and legs were covered in what looked like thick fur, creamy white with black stripes at the knees and joints. The tarantula seemed to be in no hurry. Perhaps it was wondering what the strange vibrations under its feet were – Peter's rapid breathing and pounding heart.

‘Wow,' Beck murmured. ‘That's a beauty.'

‘Get it off me,' Peter hissed.

‘You know how these things eat?' Beck asked conversationally. ‘They inject their victim with a venom that liquidizes their insides. Then they just kind of suck it all out—'

‘
Get it off me!
' Peter was almost screaming.

‘But that's only small animals. Humans are too big.' Beck carefully reached for a stick and the glass knife. ‘You know, hardly anyone ever dies of a tarantula bite . . .'

With one swift movement he flipped the spider off his friend and onto the tree. Then he pinned it down and cut off its head.

‘Thanks!' Peter snapped. ‘No hurry, then! And I
so
wanted to hear all about its eating habits.'

‘The nastiest parts of a tarantula are the tiny hairs all over its body and legs,' Beck added. ‘They're called urticating hairs – if threatened, the tarantula sheds them and they irritate any predator, getting in their lungs and stuff. It's easy to remember urticating, because if you get them in you, they 'urt!'

‘That's a terrible joke, Beck!'

‘Anyway, relax. It wasn't going to bite you. Wrong place, wrong time, that's all.' Beck held the tarantula up by one of its feet, using two small twigs as chopsticks. ‘But right place and right time for breakfast!'

Peter pulled a face and muttered something under his breath about how Beck should never start a restaurant.

They pulled on their shoes and socks, which were still a little damp but much drier than yesterday. Beck turned his attention to the fire, which was still smouldering. He added a little more termite nest to get a flame going again; then he held up the dead spider.

‘So how do we get rid of the hairs? You can't just bite into that!' Peter said, prodding the tarantula.

Beck brushed the spider's body very gently with the tip of the knife. The hairs were barbed and designed to come off and embed themselves in anything that attacked it. ‘They aren't lethal but they're incredibly itchy,' Beck replied. ‘If they get into soft, sensitive skin, like your mouth, they burn like crazy.'

‘So we shave it?'

‘No, we burn the hairs off.'

Beck cut the legs off the body and flicked them away with the knife tip. Then he stuck the knife into the seeping hole where the head had been and held the body gently to the flame. He turned his wrist slowly, letting the flame play over every part of the body. It wasn't enough to cook it, but bit by bit the hairs withered and curled and smoked away. Eventually all that was left was a faint layer of sooty ash which he could brush away with his fingers.

‘
Now
we eat it!'

Beck carefully sawed the spider in half. Green and yellow innards oozed up over the glass blade.