He tried a smile, but it wasn’t a great success.
‘I’m terribly worried about Berulu,’ he whispered, putting his hands over the tarsier’s ears. ‘They die in captivity! Suppose they put him on one of those ships that take half the ani—’ Winston interrupted himself. He was listening.
They all heard it. Footsteps, voices, machetes cutting a way through the jungle.
Barnabas put his arm around Ben’s shoulders, and Berulu hid under Winston’s T-shirt. Sorrel liked to say, ‘Humans make more noise than wild boar,’ and it was certainly true of these ones. English and Indonesian words came through the forest to their ears.
‘Will they really sell us as slaves?’ Ben whispered to Winston. Only Berulu’s tail was still in sight. ‘That’s ridiculous! I mean, this is the twenty-first century!’
‘So?’ Winston retorted. ‘Didn’t you hear Kraa? There are a great many mines on the nearby islands. They always need cheap labour there. And what comes cheaper than slaves?’
Shrii’s monkeys set up a plaintive chattering.
‘Stop that!’ cried Patah. ‘Or do you want Kraa’s henchmen to tell him we were scared?’
TerTaWa began singing softly. They had caught the gibbon as he was trying to r
each Shrii’s cage. If only one of them at least had escaped!
Awan Petir smoothed down his greying coat with his hands, as if smartening himself up for the coming negotiations. Then, from the head of the griffin statue, he directed the other macaques to crouch beside the basketwork cages.
Seven men emerged from the trees. They did not all come from this part of the world. Two were in such ragged clothes that Ben remembered what Barnabas had once said about the poachers of Africa. ‘Often they only want to feed their families, Ben. Hunger and poverty seldom teach people to feel compassion.’ The third poacher was almost as large as Hothbrodd, and looked even grimmer than the troll. The fourth had so many tattoos on his brown skin that you could probably have read his entire life history from them. The remaining three were the kind of hunters and trophy-collectors that Ben had met only too often by now: men who knew only one way of approaching other creatures; by showing them that they themselves were stronger. Men who felt considerably better in the presence of dead animals rather than those still living.
The leader nodded to Awan Petir like an old acquaintance. He called himself Catcher, and had already done many deals with Kraa’s black macaques. Awan Petir nodded back as he stared down, with an expressionless face, at the troop of men. He wouldn’t have been able to say how many animals had already lost their lives and their freedom because of him. Awan Petir was interested solely in his own freedom, and he liked bargaining with Catcher, even if the latter always stank of sweat and onions, and made even crocodiles seem warm-hearted. But Catcher paid well, and had never tried to hunt in the mountains, which Kraa had declared his own preserve. Not all humans were as clever as that. Awan Petir used to take their skulls down to the beach in person.
‘No marbled cats today?’ Catcher was strolling past the cages as if inspecting the display in a supermarket. The skin of his fat face was peeling in the sunlight, and Ben could see neither hunger nor the thrill of the chase on it. Catcher was a salesman. Ben had learned that you had to fear those more than anyone else, and Winston could have confirmed it. He knew Catcher only too well.
‘My word, who do we have here? Winston Setiawan. I thought this island, at least, would be safe from you.’ Catcher spoke English with an Australian accent, but he didn’t say exactly where he came from. ‘Kamaharan! How many of our monkeys has this little imp of Satan already freed?’
Not for nothing did the man whom Catcher beckoned over to his side bear the name of Kamaharan; it means ‘storm’ in Indonesian.
‘Thirty-seven.’ Winston got in first with the answer. His voice was shaking slightly, but you could hear how proud he was of the number.
‘And over a hundred birds. Let’s see if you can open the locks of cages so easily from the inside, sonny!’ Kamaharan kicked Winston’s basket so hard that he fell back against the bars, and Berulu’s horrified screech emerged from his T-shirt. ‘Very stupid of you to come to this island. Didn’t you know that the lion-birds allow only visitors who pay to come here, and are well-disposed to poachers? And how about the others – since when did you go around with humans? I thought all your friends were lousy monkeys and tarsiers.’
He stepped back, with a curse, when Hothbrodd, in the next basket, pressed his face to the twigs with a threatening expression, and called them all follet feiltakelse fra Odin.
The tattooed man went over to Kamaharan and stared incredulously at the troll.
‘Maybe we’d better let this one go,’ he murmured in awe. ‘Looks like a forest demon!’
‘Nonsense.’ Catcher examined Hothbrodd as if he was already counting the money he’d get for the troll. ‘Why, we could even offer him to a TV network. Or one of those crazy billionaires who’ll pay a fortune for a horror like this.’
Hothbrodd spat in his sunburned face when Catcher thoughtlessly came close to his basket. Troll saliva is not at all appetising, and Catcher got so much of it that he looked as if he had been washing in stomach fluids stinking of fish. Barnabas hastily got in front of Hothbrodd when Kamaharan raised his shotgun, but Catcher reached for the barrel and pulled it roughly out of Kamaharan’s hands.
‘What’s the idea?’ he snapped at him, wiping the slimy saliva off his face with his sleeve. ‘D’you think he’ll make as much money dead and stuffed?’
‘Some time or other,’ growled Hothbrodd, ignoring Barnabas’s warning glance, ‘you’ll have to let us out of this basket, and then I’ll skin you all and make a fine big sail out of you. I’d think– ‘he added, pointing to the tattooed man – ‘your skin in particular will look just fabulous!’
Kamaharan liked to boast of strangling crocodiles with his bare hands, but even he took a step back on hearing Hothbrodd’s grisly threat.
‘How about this one?’ asked another of the men, pointing to Barnabas. ‘I guess they’ll never take him off our hands for the mines. Looks like some kind of professor who’s lost his way in the jungle!’
The others laughed, although they still kept a respectful distance away from Hothbrodd.
‘Some kind of professor?’ cried Winston.
Ben gave him a warning look, but unfortunately Winston was so indignant that he didn’t notice.