The New Noah Read Online Free

Esholi.
    We had been hunting nearly the whole night without very much luck, when one of the hunters suggested that we make our way to a certain place of which he knew where there was a cliff with a great
number of caves in it. Here, we thought we should be able to find some sort of creature.
    We set off and came eventually to a wide river which we had to cross. We waded through the cold water, waist-deep, and when we were in the middle, the hunter behind me switched on his torch, and
there all around us were dozens of water snakes, swimming to and fro, watching us with their bright eyes, their necks sticking out of the water like submarine periscopes. These snakes are not
poisonous, although they can give a bite when they get angry. However, the Africans are convinced that every kind of snake is poisonous, and so they treat them all with great caution. My hunter,
when he saw that he was stuck in the middle of a river surrounded on all sides by what seemed to be the entire water-snake population of the Cameroons, uttered loud yelps of fright and tried to run
to the bank. Trying to run in water that is waist deep is not very easy and the current caught him off balance and he fell back into the water with a splash, dropping all the equipment that he had
been carrying on his head.
    The water snakes, frightened by this sudden commotion, all dived for cover.
    When the hunter rose again, spluttering and gasping, and his companions asked him what was the matter, he said that the river was full of snakes, whereupon they switched on their torches and
shone them on the surface of the water, but not a single water snake was to be seen. After a bit of an argument, I managed to persuade them all to stand still in the middle of the river and we
switched off our torches and waited quietly for half an hour or so. When we all switched on our lights again, there were the water snakes once more, weaving silvery patterns in the water around us.
With the aid of our long-handled butterfly nets, we succeeded in catching four or five of these snakes and dropping them wriggling and squirming into our collecting bags. Then we went on our
way.
    We reached the cliffs at last and found they were literally honeycombed with caves of all different shapes and sizes, the entrances of which were almost hidden by great masses of boulders and
short undergrowth. We each took a section of the cliff and set to work to see what we could find.
    As I was pushing along through the rocks, shining my torch hopefully here and there, I saw a peculiar shape jump out of a bush, scuttle across the ground and then dive into a small hole in the
cliff face. I hurried forward, and kneeling down by the mouth of the cave, shone my torch up it, but there was nothing to be seen. The passage was about as wide as a door, but only some two feet
high, and in order to get inside to where the animal had gone, I had to lie flat on my tummy, hold the torch in my mouth and pull myself slowly along. This was extremely uncomfortable, as the floor
of the passage was sprinkled with sharp-edged rocks of various shapes, and so my progress was slow and painful.
    I found that this tunnel ended in a small circular room from which another led off, still deeper into the interior of the cliff. Crawling through this second passage I shone my torch down and
discovered that it, too, ended in a little room, only far smaller than the one in which I was lying. As I was flashing my torch around, I heard two thumps, followed by a crisp rustling sound,
rather like a rattle. Before I could see what had produced this noise, there was another burst of rattling and something hurled itself out of the gloom of the cave, knocked the torch out of my
hand, and ran what felt like fifty needles into my wrist. I retrieved the torch and retreated hastily to examine my wrist which was scratched and pricked as though I had plunged it into a
blackberry bush.
    Crawling back up the tunnel again I shone the torch