Twigleg searched his mind for a translation of the word, but Me-Rah’s panic-stricken squawking seemed to have obliterated all his knowledge. Lola told him to do up his seat belt, but his fingers were shaking as if they belonged to someone else. Something was snorting and wheezing outside the opening in the trunk of the hollow tree. A muzzle pushed its way in, followed by a stocky body with sturdy bow legs, a badger-like head, and shaggy grey-brown fur. A binturong.
Lola started the engine, but it would only spit and judder. The jungle climate really didn’t suit the plane. Fly, thought Twigleg, oh, please fly! He really wouldn’t have thought he’d ever want that so passionately. Luckily for them, the binturong didn’t move very fast, but it was making purposefully for them, and Lola’s plane wasn’t much larger than its head! Its paws would scoop them out of the tiny aircraft as easily as scooping the flesh out of an avocado!
But when the attacker was only a few padding footsteps away, Lola finally got the engine to catch. The binturong stopped and looked in surprise at the humming thing rising and lurching in the air in front of it. Then it straightened up, as clumsily as a dancing bear hitting out at a moth, and raised its paw. The first blow hit the left wing. The second only just missed the fuselage of the plane. Groaning, Twigleg put his head between his knees as Lola brought the spinning aircraft up just in time, before it could crash into the wall of the hollow tree. But the hairy paws were still reaching out to it. This time they missed the propeller by a centimetre, and almost tore off one of the wheels. Next moment the world was upside down, and only Twigleg’s belt kept him in his seat. Lola steered in reverse through the animal’s shaggy hind legs, and so narrowly escaped another blow of its paw. The draught of that blow almost carried the plane out into the night.
‘Fly higher! Higher!’ cried Twigleg.
‘Oh yes?’ Lola shouted back. ‘So that we get caught in the lianas and drop appetisingly in front of this creature’s paws?’
Then binturong was obviously enjoying the hunt. It snorted and grunted like a dog chasing a ball, and Twigleg saw, in alarm, that Lola was checking the amount of fuel she had left, with a look of concern on her face. The engine began spluttering again, but just as Lola was reaching for the signal pistol in this emergency, Me-Rah came to their aid. She bravely pecked the binturong’s ear and then dive-bombed its sensitive nose. Twigleg felt ashamed to see so much courage from the parrot, but the binturong soon recovered from its surprise, thrust at Me-Rah with its head and swept her out of the air.
Now it was Lola’s turn to help the heroic parrot. She sent the whirring plane so boldly past the attacker’s nose that Twigleg found himself wedged between the seats once more. But Me-Rah was so dazed after being head-butted by the binturong that she was still on the floor when it turned to her again.
Oh no! It was going to eat Me-Rah before their eyes!
When the piece of bark dropped from above, and hit the binturong right on the head, Twigleg thought at first it was a lucky coincidence. But a second piece of bark followed the first, and this time it hit its mark again, right between the binturong’s ears. The robber howled, and rubbed its shaggy head, baffled. A third missile struck its muzzle, and was followed by such a loud screech that the hollow tree echoed to the sound. That was too much for the nocturnal hunter. The binturong retreated with a disgruntled puffing, and scrambled hastily through the gap in the tree trunk and out into the night. Another piece of bark flew after it, followed by a chatter expressing considerable satisfaction.
Twigleg exchanged an enquiring glance with Lola, but she seemed to have no more idea than he did what to think of the help they had received. Lurching through the air, she came down beside Me-Rah, who was still sitting on the floor, stalled the engine, and threw the signal pistol into Twigleg’s lap.
‘Give me cover, humklupus!’ she hissed, while Twigleg stared blankly at the pistol. ‘I’m afraid this unexpected help just means we’re going to land on a different dinner-plate!’ Then she jumped out of the plane, with the spanner in her paw, and placed herself protectively in front of Me-Rah, who was wailing and plucking at her left wing.
‘Hey!’ called Lola into the darkness from which the chattering sound came. ‘I don’t know who or what you are, but one thing’s for sure all over the world: rats are poisonous to eat, and this one will be particularly difficult to digest. Especially when people want to have her friends for dinner!’
The chattering that replied sounded much amused.
At this Lola lost the last of her sense of humour. ‘Oh, so you think it’s funny?’ she shouted shrilly up to their rescuer. ‘Seems to me you’ve let our size mislead you. You’d better be warned: there are three of us!’
And so there were. Twigleg climbed out of the plane to prove it. Why die alone as a coward, when he could do it in the company of friends? He stationed himself beside Lola and raised the pistol, though he hadn’t the faintest idea how to fire it.
‘A jenglot! By the hair on the head of the Golden Gibbon!’ came a reply from above them. ‘Why didn’t you let him loose on the binturong? Although he looks very pale, and instead of pointed teeth he seems to have only a pointed nose!’
‘A jeng-what? Nonsense, he’s something far worse!’ Lola replied, raising the spanner threateningly. ‘He’s a homunculus!’
So there it was! Twigleg had known all along that she got the word for him muddled up on purpose.
‘Go on!’ Lola whispered to him. ‘Look as ferocious as you can!’
Twigleg did his best, but it took all his courage to stay put when a figure emerged from the lianas above them.
A very long-armed figure with dark body hair.
Their rescuer was a gibbon.
Wearing a man’s jacket.
He landed smoothly on the withered leaves and bent down first to Me-Rah, then to Lola, and finally to Twigleg.
‘Very unusual clothes for a jenglot,’ he observed in an ape dialect that reminded Twigleg of the language of Madagascan lemurs.
Lola clutched the spanner even more firmly in her paw.
‘What’s he saying?’ she whispered to Twigleg, looking darkly up at the gibbon. ‘Can we trust him?’
Their rescuer didn’t seem to make Me-Rah uneasy. She was paying a good deal more attention to her hurt wing, which Twigleg thought was reassuring. He was also beginning to get really curious about these jenglots.
‘Ha!’ said the gibbon. ‘Now I know what you remind me of!’
Twigleg raised the signal pistol again as the gibbon bent over him, but he saw no ill will in the dark eyes bent on him. All that Twigleg saw there was curiosity. And a clever mind.